#and we put up all the flashing neon signs to warn people

[certified-anakinfucker]

ok this is unprompted but if you pride yourself on being the reason people leave a space for something they genuinely love and have done no objective wrong - youre a piece of shit btw. like full send youre horrible.

[aechawrites]

200mph: part one | jjk

pairing: jungkook x reader

word count: 2k

rating: pg13

warnings: swearing, mentions of drinking and smoking, y/n is a little uncomfy but jimin stays with her like a good bff, brief mention of a racing accident

summary: as jungkook begins the new racing season, a face he’s never seen before quickly catches his attention.

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“I don’t understand why you want me to go, you have guy friends that are interested in that kind of stuff, don’t you?”

“That’s not the point, Y/n. If I wanted them to go, I would’ve asked them by now, but I asked you.”

You sighed, slightly shaking your head at the begging boy in front of you while slowly making eye contact with the ground and lowering yourself onto the foot of your bed. Your arms were wrapped around your upper body and you couldn’t help but let out another huff, contemplating whether or not you should give him a bullshit excuse as to not go.

Jimin has been your best friend since you were young kids, meeting for the first time in elementary school. As you grew up, the two of you became inseparable, always spending time together. And on a typical day you would have loved spending your Friday night with him, that is, up until recently.

As the two of you began college back in the fall, you both started to branch out and try new things. You knew Jimin was going to fit right in with the frat boys and it was reassuring to have someone watch your back at their parties; it made them a little more bearable. What you did not expect was for Jimin to gain an interest in motorsports, specifically street racing.

You had heard him saying not too long ago that some of the guys in the frat house raced occasionally. 'Big money,' he said, but if only you knew just exactly how much those winners were getting paid, as well as the spectators who decided to bet on certain drivers.

The two of you had just gotten takeout and were lying in your dorm room while watching (and making fun of) random reality shows. You had gotten up to use the bathroom just to come back out and have Jimin spring onto you that there was a street race tonight and a couple of his frat brothers would be there racing.

And instead of going by himself and making friends like the social butterfly he is, he of course had to invite you.

Now here you were, brain working overtime trying to come up with some lame excuse to seem busy. But Jimin knew you weren't.

"Y/n, I promise you'll have a good time tonight. It's not as boring as you think. We'll only be there for an hour or two and then we can come back to the dorms," he expressed while softly pouting his lips at you.

"What's in it for me?"

Jimin rolled his eyes at you. "I'll finish your damn English paper, okay?"

Although still reluctant, you agreed to go. As long as this doesn't become a regular Friday night occurrence for you, how bad could it be? It also helped that he gave you the biggest eye smile after you said yes.

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You thought that maybe four to five people would be here racing, bringing a few friends each, but no. Not at all. In fact, the streets were packed like a full house. There had to have been roughly twenty guys standing alongside their expensive muscle cars, engines roaring loudly and echoing through the streets, wheels shining as camera flashes blinded them. There were also probably two hundred people who got their asses up to come out tonight to see these men race. The atmosphere seemed similar to some of the parties you had been to, so it was to no surprise that it garnered a large viewing.

But putting it simply, you were intimidated. It was very crowded and here you were being dragged behind Jimin as he tried to get the two of you closer to the front where the start/finish line was located. Was it really necessary for these large muscular men to keep giving you side eye as you bumped into them?

Had it not been for the dozens of lights and neon signs hung up everywhere, the streets would have practically looked like a ghost town. There was nothing here, close to abandonment, which made for the perfect place. Old beer cans and ashes scattered the ground, you noted that they must have been racing here for a lot longer than you originally thought.

You brought your gaze up, looking around when you noticed there were cigarettes and blunts everywhere. Almost every guy here was either smoking or drinking, sharing with the girls who had draped themselves overtop of them. They were practically naked as they wore knee-high strappy stilettos and those short, skimpy skirts (the ones that stop just below their ass cheeks), paired with either a very cropped tank top, or a V-neck top that rested so low that their breasts would fall out any minute. It was almost impossible not to catch a glimpse of their lacey thongs as they wrapped their arms around the guys' shoulders. Although you knew those guys were enjoying the attention they got, the views being an added bonus.

But what were you wearing tonight? A t-shirt and jeans.

Did Jimin tell you about the unofficial "dress code" for this kind of event? Nope.

You wouldn't have dressed like them even if he had told you, but you also could've worn something even a slight bit more revealing than this! Even if it was a skirt that went mid-thigh along with a tighter top!

You felt a nudge on your shoulder, breaking your train of thought and gaze away from the crowd and closing back on Jimin. His hand was on your elbow as he pulled you closer, leaning down to your ear and started yelling, but you could still barely hear him over the blasting music. "The race is about to start; my pick is Jeon."

"I guess I'll go with him then, too," you said as you smiled back up at him. The two of them had been good friends for a while, so what better choice?

You had heard of Jeon Jungkook, even seeing him around a few times when partying with Jimin. How could you miss him whenever he wore those tight jeans and white shirts that hugged his muscles so perfectly, complementing his tanned skin. And his tattoos! God those fucking tattoos made you want to drop to your knees right then and there for him. It didn't help that he not only had an eyebrow piercing, but also a lip ring that he just couldn't seem to stop playing with. Jungkook is a very attractive man, and you could agree with that whether you were in a drunken state or not.

But you knew Jungkook hadn't heard of you. There was no way. In fact, he never even spared you a glance at any of those parties. His tongue seemed to be always shoved down someone else's throat. The only mutual friend the two of you had was Jimin, but since you both came from complete opposite sides of his life, you were rarely crossed paths with each other.

Yet again, your thoughts were quickly broken, startling you as everyone began to cheer louder; you noticed the guys were now getting into their respective cars. Engines revved as each of their names were introduced, girls fawning and screaming over them.

As everyone moved out of the street and onto the sidewalks, the announcer walked onto the platform, taking the mic. "I want a clean race gentlemen. You know how this goes; first place takes it all. Ready... Set... GO!"

And with that, they were out of your sight as they sped off and made the first turn. From where Jimin had you standing, there were large screens visible on the side of the buildings that showed them from a drone view as they raced through the city. It was terrifying watching as they weaved around each other, just narrowly avoiding a few obstacles that happened to be in the way.

It was easy for you not to lose sight of Jungkook. He stood out by driving the brightest neon blue Chevrolet Camaro you had ever seen, decorated with white stripes down the middle. He also happened to be leading significantly in front of the other racers, giving him just enough time to makes turns a bit more cautiously.

You turned back to Jimin. "How long are they racing for?"

"Usually about 7 miles. Not too long, but just long enough to get a good race out of these guys."

You nodded your head, eyes focusing back onto the screens.

You winced when some of the girls would let out these high-pitched shrieks whenever they saw two of the guys spin each other around, smoke engulfing their cars, but the racing never stopped. It didn't matter what happened or how badly they would place, the race would go on without them.

A few minutes passed by and you could hear the engines becoming significantly louder as they approached the finish line, back where you all stood. The overhead camera still focused on Jungkook as he led the group, but you could see someone quickly coming up from behind him.

You hear Jimin mumble, "Fuck Y/n, if he blocks he might actually win this."

And that he did.

The guy behind was racing aggressively, but Jungkook was able to perfectly block him each time he made an attempt to get around his car, which made for an extremely close photo finish as he sped past the checkered flag. Obviously, all the girls were now cheering even louder than before, starting to run into the street and up to Jungkook as he climbed his way out.

But that's reasonable because fuck did he look so good. Beads of sweat were running down his forehead as his bangs fell in front of his face. That large, tattooed arm of his just had to push the strands of jet-black hair back while a smirk was displayed across his face. He was winking to the girls all around him, once again playing with that damn lip ring.

Jimin pulled you with him to go congratulate Jungkook as they announced his name, but you kept yourself hidden behind his back. This just wasn't your place; you weren't friends with Jungkook, you didn't even know him. Most of their frat brothers were there, high fives and fist bumps being shared between them all, and you stood awkwardly, like you were invading their space.

"Jungkook holy fuck! You're a fucking monster out there!" Jimin laughed as the two of you had shuffled your way directly in front of Jungkook. You had been attempting to stay hidden behind Jimin, but one glance up and now you were making eye contacting with the winner himself.

God, he looked even better up close, those big brown eyes of his displaying so much joy. Maybe a hint of cockiness, too. Just slightly, though.

You, however, quickly looked away, looking anywhere but at him. But Jungkook didn't, he kept his eyes focused on you. Whatever Jimin had been saying became muffled and was going in one of his ears and out the other.

Jungkook was confused. Were you one of Jimin's friends? How had he never seen you before? He definitely would have noticed and remembered you! Were you usually at these races?

He must have zoned out and before he knew it, you and Jimin had started walking away from him as more people tried coming closer to talk to and congratulate him about the win. The girls you had observed from the beginning of the night were now wrapping their arms around him, posing for pictures to post to social media, but he didn't even bother to pay them any attention.

As the night passed by, Jungkook tried celebrating with the rest of his frat house but just couldn't get the picture of you out of his head. Who were you? He made a note to himself to question Jimin once he came back for the night.

///

a/n; it's finally here!! i'm so excited for this series and i really hope you are too!!!!! please leave feedback🤍🤍

2023; © aechawrites

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

If You Can't Dance 1

Warnings: dubcon, noncon, other possible triggers. Proceed with caution.

Note: this is what you get when you encourage me. Please leave any and all feedback! 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷

Part of The Club AU

“It's so nice to finally meet you in person!” Melinda beams as she holds out a bright drink. The layers of blue and purple make you wonder about its contents.

“Yeah, so awesome,” Faye hollers as she sips from a yellow cocktail. “Must be lonely working from home.”

“Oh, uh, not really,” you sway, trying to avoid the bodies around you. Your throat scrapes as you have to yell over the pumping bass. “It's…quiet.”

“Quiet!? Carly giggles, “then It's good you got out! This merger is going to be lit.”

“Lit?” Melinda, the eldest of the trio rolls her eyes, “you young ones.”

You wade with them through the crowd, the heat of the clubgoers catching beneath the wool of your sweater. You feel out of place in your dowdy pullover and long peasant skirt, especially as sequins and bright prints refract in the rainbow of lights. Even your coworkers belong, blouse sleeves rolled up and blazers handed over to the coatroom.

“Hopefully they're still down for work drinks!” Faye trills.

“Bigger and better. Work mandated cocktails should just be a thing,” Carly guffaws.

“Mmm, and what about work mandated flings?” Faye ogles past you.

You crane to follow her eyeline. You see several men, striding through the crowd with ease. Tall and not bad looking by common standards. You see nothing especially alluring but you understand what people look for; good posture, nice eyes, broad shoulders.

“Erm,” you look back and taste your drink, giving a face. “Is there alcohol in this?” You call over.

“Duh!” Carly laughs again, “oh my god, you're so adorable! Oh, you know what, you should start coming into office. We do lattes on Friday.”

“I er… don't mind….”

You don't finish your protest as the tempo shifts and Faye squeals, “oh this is my song, girls!”

They throw an arm up each, balancing their drinks in their other hands. You sniff the glass and try another gulp. You cough and hide it behind your hand. They barely notice you. No one really does, you're tiny and dressed like wallpaper.

As they shimmy and swing to the music, you don't know what to do. You wiggle awkwardly, but you don't dance and have no rhythm. You find yourself downing the drink out of anxiety.

You feel an odd sensation in your eyelids and a ripple in your brain as you get to the bottom of the drink. You copy Carly and leave your empty glass on a table. Another song and the heat beads on the nape of your neck.

The flashing lights and wall of sound makes you dizzy. You shouldn't have finished the drink. You don't feel right. You look at the others and how they giggle and joke. You don't fit in. Just like always. You know your coding and you know how to be alone.

You sidle close to Melinda, she seems like a mother, well, she kept mentioning her kids. “Is there a bathroom here?”

She laughs, amused by your obvious question, “over there.”

She points through the crowd. You see the top of a sign but not enough to read it. You smile and wave to the other girls, fleeing as they barely notice.

You get caught between a couple as you try to squeeze by. You squeal and get knocked around by a large guy on the other side of them. You're caught in a tidal wave of people as you peer desperately at the neon blue sign.

You can't get there but you need to get out of here. Your skin is on fire, your vision is streaming, and you can't breathe. The air is hot and humid and putrid.

You claw before you, forcing past the crush around you, stumbling towards the entryway. You trip out the door and heave in, gulping down cold air, trying to get your head straight. Your chest hurts and you're shaking. You need help!

You look around for anything. Anyone. The bouncers are distracted with those seeking entry and those in line don't seem to see you. You lean on the corner of the building and put your hand on your sweater.

You clutch the wool and shake your head. It's been a while since you felt this. The world spirals around you as you struggle to steady yourself. You keep your other hand on the wall and murmur. You're going to pass out.

You shouldn't have come here. You knew this would happen. But they didn't give you a choice. The email said mandatory. You need this job. What are you going to do? Everything is falling to pieces.

“Pardon me, are you alright?” A lilting voice startles you. You part from the wall, nearly falling against it as you teeter on your feet, “oh, woah, watch yourself.”

The man catches your arm, keeping you from tipping over. His touch surges in you but you know you can't stand on your own. You gulp and gurgle, fanning yourself.

“S-s-sorry,” you pants, “I just… I can't breathe.”

He leans in as you can barely speak. His blue eyes are intent on you as he keeps you upright, firm but gentle. He nods as he listens to your staggered words.

“I… too hot… inside…”

“Oh, dear, yes, I agree,” he smiles kindly, “here, why don't you…. lean here, yes,” he eases you against the brickfront, “catch your breath,” his accent is soothing, “and…” he looks around, gesturing to the bouncer, “Pardon, yes, would you fetch some water for the lady?”

The man grumbles but glances inside the club. He must know the stranger before you, “you have some water and it'll be just fine. Hmm? Will you count with me?”

You give him a bewildered look but he's already counting, “one, two, three…”

[sunshinescribes]

Hard Came the Rain - 1

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara x Fem!Reader

Rating: EXPLICIT (more so in later chapters, but there’s some…thirsting here)

Warnings: 18+ | Miguel is annoying and emotionally repressed but reader knows this and gives him shit for it

Summary: Working with Spider-Man to uncover a conspiracy hidden beneath the glittering skyscrapers and flashy holograms of Nueva York was never supposed to be easy, but you didn’t realize just how complicated it could be.

You like to think that he doesn’t hate you.

Like to imagine that he actually enjoys your company—this faux Batman and Robin dynamic you two have going on—but that would make you both foolish and unbearably optimistic.

The truth of the matter is, if you weren’t damn good at your job, he wouldn’t bother with you. You know as well as any other Nueva York native that Spider-Man doesn’t do sidekicks—he had told you as much when he first stumbled across you, a wide-eyed, reckless journalist caught amid an unraveling conspiracy that would surely shatter your city's delicate pseudo-serenity.

But you had put that silver tongue of yours to work, cautious of the hulking mass of a man before you as he hauled a barely conscious crime lord over his shoulder. You could help me, and I could help you. He had laughed at your offer—that dry, more baffled than amused kind of laugh that spurred you on instead of deterring you.

You could do the things he couldn’t. Be inconspicuous, blend in with the crowd, and use the connections you've built over the years. Hell, you had talked your way into the same room he was in, no fancy gadgets or super suit required—though you didn’t feel it necessary to mention how you also leveraged your sexuality. You were right either way. When people saw the sharp talons and flash of blue and red, they had a habit of running. You imagined it made his work only twice as hard.

And of course, your heart leapt at the prospect of having Spider-Man in your corner, Jameson’s hit pieces be damned. He could venture into spaces you couldn’t possibly imagine, taking on threats that proved to be too great. If you had any hope of exposing the wickedness hidden beneath the glittering skyscrapers and flashy holograms of Nueva York, you would need his help.

We could both minimize our troubles, you had proposed with a shrug, attempting to mask the desperation in your voice. He stopped in his tracks then, so still and silent that you could practically hear the gears in his head moving. And after a long, torturous minute, he sighed.

You had shamelessly squealed with delight, and if the squint of the sharp lines that made up the eyes of his suit was anything to go by, he wasn’t nearly as pleased as you.

It’s been about a month since then, and while you can’t say his attitude has particularly changed, at least you two have some semblance of routine.

You glance at your window expectantly, watching as his silhouette draws closer. The sharp, bright red lines of his suit contrast with the dark blue that blends with the night sky. If it wasn’t for the blinding neon signs and flickering holograms, the skeletonized symbol that breeds fear in the hearts of Nueva York’s criminals might be the only thing you could make out.

He swings to your window, sliding it open and slipping inside with grace, like he pays rent. It makes you laugh softly, thinking about how he all but nagged you the first time he realized you often leave it unlocked—the fact that you live on the tenth floor deemed irrelevant—now it’s his sole point of entry.

"What’s so funny?" he asks as he closes the window behind him. You make out the faint sound of the lock engaging, and you can’t help but grin.

"You," you answer, but he doesn’t dignify your teasing with a response. He rarely does. Instead, he stalks over to where you’re seated, swiping through several holographic screens in between your occasional glances in his direction.

He just hovers there, silent, and although you can’t make out a single thing—a conscious design choice  no doubt—you almost swear you can feel his eyes wandering, taking in your scantily clad figure—your relatively tight, albeit flattering tank top and shorts that you’re almost certain are actually boxers belonging to an ex. It’s not your fault you live in what can only be the shittiest apartment complex in the city. It’s archaic, practically a historical site at this point, and you’d bet on your life that none of the tenants living in Noho ever worry about their central cooling system not working.

At least this place is affordable.

You swallow, turning your attention back to the glowing screens in front of you.

"My AC’s out," you shrug, attempting to sound as nonchalant as you can manage. You curse the slight quiver in your voice as you subconsciously glance back up at him.

"You snuck into Roxxon?" he suddenly asks.

Oh.

Your movements waver for a fraction of a second, but you know he catches it. You mentally cringe, fully aware of the fact that you won’t be able to laugh your way out of this one.

"I just thought—"

"We talked about this." He stops you before you can even start, frustration clear in his voice.

You sigh, swiping your holograms away before staring back up at the sharp red lines of his mask, praying you meet his eyes.

"No, you talked about it," you counter. "I listened."

"Listened?" he scoffs with a shake of his head as he begins to pace through your cramped apartment. "That’s the thing. You don’t listen."

His words slip into a string of Spanish as he paces, and you can see the tension pulling his body taut as he moves, so painfully visible it could make a chiropractor cry. That’s the one thing that always stands out whenever he comes to you—how tightly wound he is, all quick gestures and clipped responses.

And you hate how a part of you wants to help relieve him of all that tension—your twisted, ravenous desire that always takes you by surprise, makes your eyes wander and your mind race with images of him breathless, sprawled out on your excuse of a couch while you work him with your mouth, your hands, anything he wants. What you wouldn’t give just to see his tensity ease away. God, it was vile and baffling—you don’t even know his name or what he looks like. There’s nothing to put into the fantasy besides the low, gruff voice that would whisper encouragements, telling you just how good you’re doing, and it would ruin you—absolutely fucking wreck you—to have him languid and praising.

Getting him to stop pacing will have to suffice.

"Well, you’ll be glad to know you don’t have to muscle through their security," you finally say as you lift from your couch. You sidestep him, reaching for the purse you discarded on your kitchen counter with little care. Your fingers sift through the pockets, fishing for the artifact that made your grand, albeit risky, venture worth it.

You turn to him with your hands behind your back.

"What are you doing?"

"Guess which hand it’s in."

The lines of his mask narrow as he steps toward you. "I don’t have time for this."

"Shame..." you sigh as he towers over you, wholly unamused by your games. You hold the device between you two, unable to stop your smile as he reaches out for it.

It shimmers in his clawed hand like rubellite, catching the light of the red emblem across his broad torso.

"You’ll tell me what’s on it, yeah?" You tilt your head, leaning back against the kitchen counter, as he glances between you and the device in his hand. "I’m sure the encryption is gonna be a real pain in the ass."

He surprises you by not immediately retreating to your window and leaving. He’s always quick to end your rendezvous, not even gracing you with so much as a goodbye.

"You can take the night off," you joke, attempting to fill the creeping silence. You can’t tell if he’s still pissed or pleased, and trying to gauge his feelings based on his movements and concealed micro-expressions is impossible. "You could sure use it."

He seems to come to life with that remark.

"What does that mean?"

The fact that you don’t roll your eyes is a testament to your self-control. The same can’t be said for your mouth.

"Come on. You’re the most agitated man I’ve ever met." You motion your hands wildly, attempting to emphasize your point. "You’re one bad day from having a conniption!"

He’s back to being a silent spectator, and maybe you’ll join him the day he finally loses it, because blindly navigating his emotions is a feat of its own, and one you are dealing with gracelessly.

"You got a fix? I’m all ears," he asks curtly, crowding into your space a little more, forcing you to strain your neck to look up at him.

Maybe telling the big angry man that he is in fact angry, and how his anger will kill him isn’t the best idea.

Even so, you blink up at him, breathing slowly as your mind flashes with images of lurid daydreams from the deepest crevice of your mind—wandering hands, soft praise.

No. That’s never going to happen, but you could ease the tension in his shoulders, work away months, maybe even years, of strain if he’ll let you. It wouldn’t be a fix—not that you ever claimed to have one—but it certainly could help.

"Maybe," you whisper, slipping away from him as you pull yourself from the counter. You make your way to your couch, plopping down with little care. You ignore the way it creaks pathetically, before sparing Spider-Man an expected look. Your eyes flit between him and the couch, a clear invitation you’re curious to see if he takes.

Although the suit does well to conceal his face and any emotion he could possibly display, the careful, almost hesitant steps he takes towards you practically scream his uncertainty.

"What—" "Just sit," you instruct with no malice or irritation, waiting as he finally settles down. He’s still statuesque, even while sitting, but with a little maneuvering, you’re able to place your hands on his shoulders with little issue.

You feel him tense under your touch, although he's still characteristically silent. You lift your hands, a clear indication that you won’t do anything he isn’t comfortable with.

"It’s no remedy, but... it might help," you explain carefully. "How many buildings have you been thrown through? Can’t be good for your back."

He’s awfully still; only the rise and fall of his shoulders give you any indication that he’s even present. You almost don’t hear him when he finally answers.

"…Okay."

You try not to beam, but you can’t help the warm feeling that settles in your chest. Sure, he’s irritable and standoffish—absolutely lacking any comedic talent—but you can’t lie and say you don’t enjoy his company, as infrequent as it is. You’ve grown accustomed to being in rooms full of people more boisterous and outgoing than you, constantly working to be the center of everyone’s attention—a symptom of living in Nueva York, you’d wager—so it was refreshing, albeit different, to be around someone who didn’t feel the need to make needless conversation or fill uncomfortable silence.

You slowly place your hands on his shoulders again, ignoring how broad they are. You can feel how tense the muscles beneath your hands are. It makes you wonder just how long he’s gone without someone looking out for him—a day of simple relaxation, but it’s almost impossible to imagine, though it’s difficult to imagine him doing many things.

You rub the heel of your palms into rigid muscles, working away the strain to the best of your ability. You try not to focus on the deep inhales he takes or the way his breath comes out slightly shaky, almost pained, when he exhales.

"You’d make some masseuses very happy; you know that?" You chuckle, pressing your thumb firmly and circling the muscles of his tortured back. "Would make for some badass promo too."

"Don’t…need one," he groans as you tackle a particularly rough spot. You try not to imagine the same sound under very different circumstances: "…you’re doing...good."

You can feel him easing into your touch with each second that passes. The strain in his voice has you squirming uncomfortably, attempting to lull a part of you that’s acutely aware of just how alluring he sounds.

"Is that a compliment?" You feign shock, incapable of stopping your grin. "I might have to do this more often. You’re so…agreeable."

You don’t mean for the word to come out dripping with sensuality, but your mind is little more than a foggy maze, and the low grunts from Spider-Man do little to ease the haze.

Maybe a different approach will help.

"How’d you know I went to Roxxon?"

"Been monitoring their security cams…Looking for patterns in the night shift..." he sighs contentedly when you bring your hands up, your fingers nearly shaking as they carefully trace the curve of his neck. "Imagine my surprise when I see a pretty little journalist scouting around…"

Your measured movements almost falter as the words slip from his lips. Your mind…isn’t sure what to make of that last statement. Maybe it’s the mind fog, courtesy of the man before you.

"I was in an employee uniform. How did you even recognize me?"

"Be difficult... mhm... not to."

"Because I’m so pretty, huh?" You tease, wondering if he’ll go back on it, blaming your surprisingly skilled hands for making him delirious, which would be one of the fairer criticisms levied against you.

"Too pretty for your own good." His voice is nearly a whisper. You almost think you conjured the words in your mind if not for how he suddenly goes rigid, as if the words escaping his mouth are the equivalent of having a truck thrown at him, and the pleasant haze dissipates.

He lifts himself from the couch with such deftness that you’d think it hurt him. Your window is already open by the time you call out to him, but he doesn’t stop or turn to give you one last lingering look. He’s gone by the time you reach your window, swallowed by the glittering neon jungle.

[ijuststareatstuffhereok89]

“The Avengers Embark on a Brief Escape from Sanity” - a Loki x Reader crack!fic one shot

You, Loki, and the Avengers go to an escape room to pass an afternoon.  You all fucking destroy the place, you chaotic sunsuvbishes.

PAIRINGS: Loki x Reader; Bucky x Steve; Author x Skywalker OG WARNINGS: the fuck if I know what my brain’s going to come up with, just know when to duck (brief erection talk and lots of Bucky ass-grabbing Steve) WORD COUNT: 2.4k

This is my 1k follower celebration, where you all dared me to write a fic while stoned, posting it un-edited. All I edited was spelling because my gods I’m not a total schmuck. For the record, at the beginning of this adventure I am about half-a-joint in, and fully intend to be two-in by the time we’re finished here today. They really should make some Marvel-named strains. A Loki OG would probably make me so horny. Like literally, his color is green so why don't we have Loki-Smoki? Anyway, here you go, my readers. Thanks for getting me to 1k! I love you….and I’m sorry. ^_^

“I don't understand,” said a highly-confused Thor as the quinjet touched down on the roof of the mall. “People put themselves in prison for fun here? How strange!”

“For once, I concur with my brother,” said a sullen Loki from the seat on your left. You smiled and slipped a hand over his. His skin always felt supple, cooler than a human’s, but still soft. “It makes no sense.”

“It’s a game!” said Steve, proud to finally be ‘in’ on something before another teammate. “To test our minds and ability to work on a team!” 

Stark rolled his eyes and stood up first as the engines stopped. “Yeah, because The Avengers have no fucking idea how teams works…or how prisons work,” he eyed Nat, along with half of the team. 

She pouted. “Fuck you.” 

You and Loki quickly got up. “I think it’ll be fun,” you said, ever the optimist. “And if nothing else, think of all the attention this small, local business will attract if just one of us takes a picture with them!” 

Loki smiled and kissed your forehead. “You’re always seeing the good in everything, even in the face of inevitable imprisonment!” 

You rolled your eyes. “Drama queen.” 

You may as well have sauntered into the mall in slow motion, you all looked so cool. Everyone recognized you as the heroes of Earth, of course, and you couldn’t get far before the wolves descended, desperate for interaction with their idols. Some of you relished in the attention. Tony was waving and handing out business cards. Thor and Steve were posing with the ladies for selfies while Bucky tried to grab Steve’s ass from behind. Meanwhile, Nat looked like she wanted to go home and punch someone. That left you and Loki in the middle, looking around over the heads of the gathering fans, looking for an exit. 

“Are you sure this isn’t the escape room?” Loki asked. 

“Over there!” you said, pointing to the left. A large, neon sign flashed “Escape-O-Rama!” from a regrettable distance away. But before you could wrangle the Avengers away from their adoring fans, two beautiful young women flanked Loki, ignoring you completely and shoving you off to the side. 

Loki grimaced. “Ladies…I’m not sure you’re aware that you just shoved my--”

“--can we get a picture?” asked one, a fair-skinned lass with lush blonde hair. “Please, Mr. Loki? God, you’re hot!”

You frowned and rolled your eyes, regaining your balance as the second girl shoved her phone into your hand. “Take the picture?”

Without letting your boyfriend get a word in edgewise, the girls threw his hands over their shoulders, giggling like idiots. Loki looked at you, and raised an eyebrow the instant he saw how red your face was getting with anger. “No, I’m not indulging a pair of ingrates!” 

They, again, ignored his protestations, leaving you to settle the matter. 

“Jesus Christ, we’ll be late for our reservation,” you muttered, growling and chucking the camera at the one girl’s face, hitting her nose, sending her careening to the floor with a grunt of shock. 

Loki looked pleasantly amused. You wasted no time in throwing the other girl off of him and hurling her body on top of her pal’s. “You seemed to forget two things, ladies,” you said, shaking a finger at them. “One, I’m an Avenger too, so I can do some cool shit myself. You should’ve wanted me in the picture too, you dirty trailer-park cunts! Two, Loki’s my man meat, so back off, you bald-ass hyenas!” 

The girls were stunned, and the other mortals who were busy accosting the rest of the team fell silent, slowly backing away and deciding to resume their business, lest they feel your wrath next. 

“Good, now can we go?” you asked sweetly, waiting until the two little bitches were looking at you before shoving your tongue down Loki’s throat for a solid twenty seconds of public access tonsil hockey. Loki loved showing off in public with you, the Kinkmeister. 

Thor didn’t like it when you did that in front of him, however, and he quickly cleared his throat. “Let’s…just go imprison ourselves.”

“Thor, I believe the correct term is ‘go fuck ourselves’,” said Tony. 

“It’s a ship prison?” asked a skeptical Loki as you were guided back to the escape room by a pimple-faced teenaged employee. 

“It’s our newest room,” bragged the kid, his voice cracking worse than Steve’s on the first night he ever saw a stripper. “Escape from the Titanic! Very popular! Very difficult to solve!”

“So it’s a very large prison, a titanic prison,” added Thor. 

“It’s named after a real ship,” said Bucky. 

“Or the movie,” added Tony. 

“You’ll have one hour to find and obtain the key that unlocks the last available lifeboat off the sinking Titanic. If you fail to find the key and leave the ship, you’ll all drown!” the kid recited, trying his best to sound interested. 

“This jerk won’t be winning any Oscars,” muttered Tony. 

The employee ignored Tony Snark. 

“I’ll be available to contact via this telegraph machine,” said the kid, indicating the large contraption by the door. “You’ll have three clues. Just tap any pattern into the telegraph, it’ll buzz me, and I’ll give you a clue. You can also bug out of the room in an emergency by tapping SOS.” 

Loki had to almost immediately slap Thor’s curious hand away from the telegraph. 

The employee set the clock to exactly one hour and left the room. As soon as he locked the door, an off-key version of My Heart Will Go On began twinkling awkwardly throughout the room, making Nat cringe. 

“This is what they did to me in Gitmo” she murmured. “Bastards.” 

“So now what?” asked Loki, looking to you for guidance. 

“Well the first clue could be anywhere, tucked in a crack in a wall or under a table…look for drawers that could be opened, clues that may be written down in a book or--”

“--here it is!” 

Tony raised the key marked “Number One” above his head. 

“Um, we didn’t even find the clue yet, asshole,” you grunted. “Slow your roll, ‘kay?” 

Tony shrugged and tossed the key on the table. “The clue on the tag says something about poop.”

“The poop deck, usually toward the back of a ship,” recited Steve as Bucky tried to make a reach for Steve’s poop deck. 

“Um, how ‘bout that sign?” Tony pointed with his thumb to the sign that literally read “POOP DECK HERE YOU NEED THE KEY” above his head in the doorway. 

The clock read 58:26 as everyone piled through the first door…except for you and Loki. You grinned slyly as you closed the door behind the others, keeping the two of you in that first room. 

“There’s only one mast I want to raise today,” you said seductively, making Loki purr with pleasure. 

“I’d counter you with an equally-witty quip, but I am not on familiar terms with the lingo that mortals use for their ships.”

“Shut up and put your tongue in my face, Loki.” 

He did, and it was fucking excellent. 

“Um, you do know there are cameras in every room?” came a timid voice from over the loudspeaker. 

“Good, it’s free porn for you!” you giggled. Loki put a gentle finger to your lips and ‘shhed’ you in a way that made you want to drop your pants. 

“Dignity, dearest,” he said softly. “Let’s wait until we can desecrate Steve’s room again.” 

You were about to agree before you were interrupted by the sound of disappointment amid Tony’s wisecracks. 

“Got the second key!” he said. 

“Oh, come ON!” moaned Steve. The clock was still barely at 55:00. 

“We should probably stay with the others. We’re going to be finished before you can even get up all the way,” you said, chuckling. 

“That is where you’re wrong, lovely,” he said, taking your hand and putting it on his crotch for just a silent, tantalizing moment.

 Yeah, he was harder than the SAT in Latin. Sadly, you wood would have to wait. 

As you and Loki caught up with the rest of the team in the second room, Tony was having a hard time getting the key to work. “It’s stuck!”

“It’ll fit, just keep at it,” said Steve. “Jam it in harder if you have to!”

“That’s what you said last night!” giggled Bucky. 

“We don't have time for this,” Tony growled. 

“We literally have all the time for this,” you replied. 

“Stand back! I will take care of this!”

You turned to the far corner of the room, where Thor stood posed with Mjolnir. 

“Jesus Christ, why did you bring that in here?!” shrieked Tony. 

“I’ll save us!” he hollered proudly, charging the locked door, his hammer poised to strike.

“NO!”“BROTHER, STOP!”“OH MY GAH--!!!”“WHAT THE FUUU---”

You woke up fifteen seconds later, strewn about the rubble, the room itself miraculously still standing in spite of the completely-blown-out inside. Loki was closer to his brother, holding him down while Tony smacked him repeatedly over the head with a chunk of table. 

You looked next to you, where Sam Wilson was standing casually. You jumped a little at his seemingly sudden appearance at your side. 

“Whoa! Sam, where did you come from?”

Sam frowned and looked at you with moderate disappointment, much how he looked every day. He just meant it today.

“I’ve always been here. All day. I was in the room this whole time and everything.” 

The team went awkwardly silent. 

Sam looked over at Cap, sadness in his eyes. “Et tu, Steve?”

Biting his lip, Steve said nothing. Bucky put his big metal hand firmly on Steve’s buttcheek, getting another piece of that hot, sweet American pie. 

“Man, fuck you all,” said Sam, turning around and walking away with his middle fingers raised. 

Later, after being permanently banned from every escape room in the state of New York, the team paid the owner of the Risk E Rat’s Pizza at the other end of the mall to close the place so that they could dine in peace. Nat enjoyed the sounds of pouting kindergarteners as they were told to leave. It harmonized well with the sounds of sirens down the way.

“What? There’s a Ms. Pac Man machine at the barbershop down by the Apple store, you ungrateful fucks!” said the crabby old owner. Nat made a note to get his number later. 

Most of you sat around a table eating cheap, stale-crust pizza. Meanwhile, Stark was off showing Bucky how to feel up the Justine the Teen Dream animatronic’s breasts, seeing if it would make him straight again (it wouldn’t). 

“So,” said Steve, his futile attempts to masticate his “pizza” failing him, so he just swallowed the gummy dough and moved on. Kiddie pizza is nasty. “So, this is awkward.”

“How are we gonna spin this one, guys? Green Guy wasn’t even with us this time,” said Tony as he and Bucky returned, Bucky looking confused and disoriented as he sat down next to Steve again. 

“Fury is going to be…ugh…”

“What is it, dearest?” asked Loki as your train of thought left the station. 

You shrugged as your mind struggled. “I had a word in my head but my brain dropped it. Fury is going to be…uh….what a synonym for being really, really angry? Fury will be that.” 

You all stared at one another in silence, none of you sure what to say next. 

Another minute of quiet. 

“Well, what do we do now?”

Loki shrugged and looked directly into the imaginary POV camera your brain is using to picture this story right now as you read these words. “It’s up to the author to finish the story,” he said with a grin. 

FUCK.

“...so, don’t just leave us sitting here!” protested Nat. “You’re the one literally putting words in our mouths!”

I’M BLITZED, GUYS. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?

“Just cut to us getting back to the Tower or something,” said Steve.

I’M NOT THAT CHEAP, STEVE. 

“So, what now?” you asked. 

WELL, HOW DO YOUR USUAL WRITERS END AN ADVENTURE?

“With a massive all out battle!” Thor jumped onto the table, raising his hammer high. 

I’M NOT DOING THAT. MY THAI FOOD’S ALMOST HERE.

“So, again I ask…now what?” you repeated. 

The author paused for a moment before typing out her final commands. 

OKAY, THOR, GO BACK TO THE ESCAPE ROOM AND APOLOGIZE FOR BLOWING UP THE STORE. THAT WAS RUDE.

Thor dropped his head and pouted. “Okay.” He sauntered off into the mall, toward the sounds of the sirens. 

NOW BUCKY, GET YOUR HAND OFF STEVE’S BUTT AND THE TWO OF YOU GO PRETEND TO BE HETEROSEXUAL FOR THE DISNEY-PLUS RELEASE OF THIS EPISODE. WE CAN’T BE SCARING OFF THE SWEET CHINESE GOVERNMENT DOLLARS, NOW.

Bucky whimpered as he took his hand back. Steve winked and kissed his forehead before stepping back and punching him square in the shoulder. “Vaginas, amirite?”

“Hell yeah, vaginas!” 

They walked off into the sunset dude-bro punching each others’ shoulders the whole way. 

NAT, I KINDA FORGOT WHAT TO DO WITH YOU. SORRY. ERRR…HERE’S FIFTY BUCKS.

A fifty appeared in Nat’s hand. “Cool. I could buy a gun with this!” She walked out. 

HEY TONY, CAN YOU NOT BE SUCH A TWATWAFFLE NEXT TIME? I’M RUNNING OUT OF FIC IDEAS THAT INCLUDE YOUR MAIN CHARACTER TRAIT NOT BEING A QUIP MACHINE.

Tony shrugged as he began to make his exit. “Hey, that’s all the MCU’s writers think I am, anyway. I’ll be off doing science somewhere.” 

As Tony walked away, everyone left could hear him singing “I’m just a quip machine, and I don't work for nobody but youuuu…”

SO, NOW IT’S JUST YOU TWO.

“Hey,” said Loki cautiously. 

“...yep,” you added. 

“So, what commands do you have for us?” Loki asked.

I DON’T KNOW…GO HAVE WILD HOT MONKEY SEX SOMEWHERE. 

“Okay!” you said cheerily, grabbing Loki’s hand impatiently dragging him toward the exit while he looked at the author with alarmed confusion. “But why do we have to include a monkey--?”

As the pair of you flew out of sight, the author looked around the Word document, and saw that it probably wasn’t all that great…but it was still more coherent than Finnegan’s Wake, so that surely counted for something.

So she closed the laptop.

Taggies for the possibly-innerested: @anukulee @buckyownsmylife @coldnique @chantsdemarins @fictive-sl0th @gigglingtiggerv2 @gruftiela @glitterylokislut @glitchquake @holymultiplefandomsbatman @holdmytesseract @itsybitchylittlewitchy @joyful-enchantress @loopsisloops @lokischambermaid @lokisgoodgirl @meowmeow-motherfucker @muddyorbsblr @mochie85 @mischief2sarawr @peachyjinx @silverfire475 @simplyholl @texmexdarling @trickster-maiden @vbecker10 @wheredafandomat @xorpsbane

[kariachi]

The thing with the whole 'oh the Rooters were allowed to operate as an experiment but oh no we never thought they'd pull this shit' is that the only way it can work is if there was literally no oversight. Because it's not like Servantis and his team are any sort of subtle.

I mean these fuckers showed up to another base without warning and immediately began fucking around with people's heads, utilizing implicit threats, jumping to violence as soon as they got the chance, openly spoke about how they were using kids as fucking test subjects, etc, when they had plenty of other options that would have been less effort for them. Even when dealing with the kids, the fuckers they were shown being the most subtle with, the lack of response to the thrown truck in the flashback, plus the keeping Argit in a cage and- if Phil's response to him is any indication- continuing to run experiments on him, show that they weren't even being all that subtle there.

These fuckers were active for at least seven years under Servantis, if not more. They don't seem to have any desire, concern, or anything about pretending to not be absolute pieces of shit. And I doubt they weren't throwing up red flags before Servantis got the mind-fucking powers, given fucking look at them and their behavior. Much like my opinion on Phil specifically- there is no way in hell that these attitudes and ideas just suddenly started. So, how the fuck did they manage to fly under the radar when they should have been a flashing neon warning sign? Really, the best options as far as explanations are

The Plumbers just sent them money and as long as they kept putting out tech didn't give them a second thought until the Top Hero got involved and they couldn't ignore them anymore

The Plumbers knew what was going on but for some reason or another didn't do anything until the fucking Top Hero got involved and they had to cover their asses to keep him backing them

The Plumbers were actively supporting their shit and once the Top Hero got involved had to lie about their involvement to cover their asses to keep him backing them

[sleepingdeath-light]

Re: an anonymous hate message I just received

as a forewarning for anyone who might read this, below the cut are some pretty awful statements and foul language directed towards me from this anonymous individual. these accusations are why i’m placing my full response under the cut.

but as a tl;dr — someone says awful and upsetting things, death is rightfully upset.

I’m also assuming that this individual is coming from the ‘toh’ fandom based on their statements — which is incredibly disappointing but oh well.

This is the complete message, which I will be breaking down and responding to point by point — so you can see that I’m not editing it to mince anon’s words.

now let’s get on to the breakdown.

————

INTRODUCTION

I’m sure that I don’t need to tell anyone that this isn’t a good way of introducing your point. Right? If anon is trying to get me on their side or show themselves to be a sympathetic or genuinely concerned person then this is going about it the wrong way entirely. You’re immediately presenting yourself as antagonistic and making yourself not likeable as a speaker.

But don’t worry it gets worse.

————

POINT ONE

They’re not real people, anon, they’re fictional characters. It’s effectively the same as when you take two dolls and make them kiss (as I’m sure most kids did at some point).

I draw the line at rpf or at sexual fiction of characters played by real children/real minors because that’s way too far. For example, smut of the IT (2017?) cast is vile to me in concept and execution.

What you’re talking about is me writing about drawings — lines/pixels with a voice actor — being in sexual situations. Fictional characters can be aged up because they’re, by definition, not real.

And besides you’re definitely in the minority opinion here as the vast majority of requests in my inbox are for hunter. Don’t you think that says something?

————

POINT TWO

Ah yes, non-con. That old beast. Its a dead dove topic and whenever I or another writer in my circle depicts it, it’s done with plenty of explicit warnings about the contents therein.

Again this is fictional content we’re talking about. Dark fiction has always been a thing and will always be a thing.

I’m taking a literature course at uni and we discuss media depicting rape and worse regularly because it’s part of literature. Writing about something doesn’t mean the writer condones that act and you shouldn’t make assumptions of character based on what someone writes.

That’s like critical media analysis 101 — you sound like you’d go after whump writers and call them murder fetishists or something lol. You’re just really not helping your case AT ALL.

Fiction is fiction; repeat until you understand that principle.

————

POINT THREE

Anon has a good point here, actually! Like their phrasing was terrible and accusatory, but if they’d led with this I’d probably be open to discussion. But burying it beneath two accusations and two insults (at minimum) isn’t going to make someone want to actually discuss the error of the system they’re using.

Of course I’m aware that people lie on the internet. I’m not an idiot — we’ve all clicked on the ‘yes I’m 18+’ pop up on dodgy sites before. I’m also aware that most smart minors will lie about their age to begin with because putting anything smaller than ‘18’ in your bio/pinned is basically a bright flashing neon sign shouting that this person is easy prey for a nonce or something along those lines.

Similarly the use of anon is dodgy and the trust system I use with requesters can easily be taken advantage of.

But what you’re incorrect about is that if I have proof of someone telling me that they’re an adult then I will not be at fault for what happens. If a minor lies to get access to an adult space and gets hurt, then that minor is liable for their own hurt — which is unfortunate but inevitable.

I’m not going to force people to give me their government issued I.Ds because I’m not a complete nutter. That would be dangerous for everyone involved and also probably doxxing. Which is, again, a big no-no.

So for as unfortunately dumb as it is, I’m going to be sticking with the honour system for requests for now. If I find a better, safer way then I’ll use that — but as we don’t have that yet, I’ll use what I’ve got available to me.

Thanks for pointing it out though! Like genuinely this is the only good part of this message lol.

————

SEND OFF

You’re already accusing me of being a nonce mate — and over fiction, at that. And to add to it all you didn’t have the gonads to do it off-anon, which is unfortunate but inevitable of this sort of person. And besides you know nothing of my tastes and attractions based on the requests I write.

To be perfectly frank out of all the characters from TOH, I’m only attracted to Belos and Alador. Most of the ‘characters’ that I end up attracted to are played by people much older than me and, also, not cartoons! Like most slashers, the avengers, and hell even Pierce Brosnan in Black Addam lol.

But that’s irrelevant. You shouldn’t come in to random people’s ask boxes accusing them of horrible things and speaking so cruelly. And if you ever do this in the future I’d recommend having the confidence in your statements to do it off anon. Or admit that your opinions are clearly in the minority.

Oh! And as a final note: no this wasn’t ignored and deleted, you got a full response. But you’re right that I don’t care, because you’re spouting complete and utter nonsense.

But oh well, since you want to be deleted so bad, I hope you enjoy your block. Have a wonderful day, anon. I hope you learn to be a better person : )

And to anyone that’s read this far: thank you for your time. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day /gen. ^^

[alstroemerian-dragon]

been having some thoughts again. thinking about pre-sim, post tragedy, that middling ground where they were taken in by the foundation but not yet discovered.

under the cut bc it might get. long

okay so. idr how much ive gone into this but the anime made some Wild decisions when it came to how the despairs got captured by the foundation because in the game its. its pretty clear how they got there and its Not by fighting the agents and getting captured. they turned themselves in. as Survivors. as Innocents. ive talked abt this i think but its pretty clear To Me from the emails we read in the last chapter of sdr2 that izuru sent anonymous info to the foundation about fifteen survivors of the hpa tragedy that they werent originally aware of and where they could be found, and that the despairs lied and pretended to have amnesia about who they were and what had happened in order to get into the foundations facilities. incredibly risky. izuru knew several things that could happen, and he knew that the survivors of dr1 would be there, and may recognize them

so now im thinking about that uneasy period after theyve turned themselves in one by one, joined together as a group pretending to be traumatized amnesiacs, but secretly plotting a destruction from the inside. And Then The DR1 Survivors Start To Remember Them.

i think it would be Really interesting if makoto remembered nagito first. just by virtue of their shared talent, and how nagito would see makoto, i think they saw a lot of each other in school, and so something like. i dunno. maybe after one session of the memory therapy trying to retrieve the survivors school memories makoto sees someone flipping a coin and it hits him like a train. and then he and kiyoko start putting the pieces together as the feeling of dread rises in them all as they all start to remember more and more, the uneasy relationship between their two classes, the snippets of memories of junko acting strangely with class 77 and how close she was to them out of everyone else in 78, and then their death at the end of the school year before the parade got to them. like. they should All be dead.

but theyre not. and theyre here. and the signs start jumping out to the dr1 cast like neon red flashing warnings.

im just thinking about them figuring out how to get the despairs on a ship without tipping their superiors off to their goal, faking paperwork, getting other people to go along with it, the despairs being confused and alarmed as to whats happening but. izuru says to go with it. dont make a fuss. dont act up yet. and so they go quietly. and only once theyre already on their way to jabberwock does kiyoko pull a gun on them and the truth comes out

man. i need to write something.

[soul-dwelling]

But speaking of Hero aca, I think it does feel like the discrimination thing got changed, because openly attacking "mutants" was reserved for the klan expy in the one chapter and it was even mentioned that they were a dieing breed of bigots. I think having the country side be more racist makes sense, but once you make them attack kids and try to kill them it gets a bit too much. Maybe I'm ignorant, but I don't think lynchings of foreigners take place in japanese villages often.

I didn’t think it was changed--at least, not entirely. 

If there was any change, it was a change of focus from “being Quirkless is like being marginalized” to “having a heteromorphic Quirk makes you a target for violence and prejudice.” 

It’s not that either focus is bad necessarily. And it’s not as if the “having a heteromorphic Quirk makes you the subject of prejudice and ridicule” was not already implicit in the manga and the English dub (more on that in a moment). 

And before I get any further into this discussion--which I’ll put under “Read More” due to length but also content warnings--there will be discussions about bigotry, disablism, racism, antisemitism, and homophobia, including personal experiences I’ve had contending with bigotry. Plus, a content warning for mentions of war, genocide, lynchings, anti-Black violence and Nazis. This is going to be a lot of rambling. 

When My Hero Academia started, what got my attention first was, “Oh, so this is a world where anyone can look like anyone and have any body type or any size or power--and you are accepted and get to live!” 

And yes, that thought was me missing the giant neon-flashing sign where Izuku’s first line of narration was that this was a world where people were not created equally. But that was why I thought, “Oh, a world where you can have any body type, size, power, or appearance and be accepted”: because Izuku was showing a world where, yes, there are people as large as Mount Lady, but the size of UA and its entrances accommodates anyone of that size*; and yes, someone like Ojiro can have his clothes customized anywhere (a point brought up again much later with Deternat); but when you don’t have a Quirk, now you are in the minority, and rather than being seen as a party that doesn’t need regulation for your power set, you are subjected to abuse and ridicule because not only are you different and outside the norms of medicine and day to day living, but you lack abilities that others have that they are willing to use to better their life, whether as Pro Hero, a Villain, or just in the privacy of their home. 

(*There are at least two glaring omissions I’m making when mentioning Mount Lady and the accommodations at UA: more on that in a moment as well.) 

I thought MHA was going to be about “here is a metaphor for disability, and how that discrimination persists even when people get more abilities.” And seeing the storyline for All Might, being born Quirkless, losing his Quirk, and more than all of that suffering from organ loss and a shortened lifespan, as well as the inability to do the things he used to do--all of that fed into my reading of MHA as a disability allegory. It’s not like it isn’t there--it’s just more complicated than that, and my fixation on that detail had me overlook what the series was setting up early on with regard to discrimination based on appearance. 

And it is that appearance-based discrimination in MHA, and while I don’t find it unrealistic or unbelievable or not applicable to our current situation, I do think that it’s a less realistic story and a less complicated one because it reduces discrimination to fear of appearances we haven’t encountered before--whereas a lot of discrimination in our world is more about how appearances, race, ethnicity, and cultures were made to be feared not only for being unfamiliar but because people attached so much bigotry, hate, prejudices, and baseless assumptions in order to make sense of their changing world. 

For example, I don’t think that cases of white supremacist bigotry emerge solely out of “this person looks different from me”: it’s a bigotry created out of hatred for that person, and a hatred born out of fear, yes, but fear because something is not matching this silly person’s narrow understanding of the world. It is systematic, after centuries of idiots who looked at people who looked different than them--and made up excuses to back up what they wanted to do. “I want to enslave someone--so I’ll just enslave them, then make up reasons to justify that I am enslaving because of this interpretation of the Christian bible, or this racist assumption that I claim is actually proven by science and anthropology, or this supposedly enlightened argument.” 

I don’t get that same realistic or believable complexity in MHA. It is, “This person looks different, therefore let’s discriminate against them.” Horikoshi got closer when just having the villagers fearful that Shoji can spread something by touch to the child--but when nearly every human being has a Quirk (and even some non-human animals), and you just assume the non-human looking people have those kind of Quirks and not, say, Overhaul or Shigaraki, that’s a stretch for me. It does demonstrate the flaw in these bigots’ arguments, and it is sadly realistic that there bigots just that fucking dumb. But my point is that there are also just as many people who hide that stupidity by pretending, “No, no, science or religion or human studies prove that my bigotry is actually logical, moral, and correct!” I don’t get that with Shoji’s story. I get narrowminded, bigoted, ignorant people out in the boondocks; I don’t see MHA showing how that kind of bigotry persists even in “educated” circles. 

(Those people are not educated, hence the air-quotes: they’re just dumb motherfuckers who think their PhD makes them an authority on a topic. Motherfucker, I have a PhD in literature--that just means an institution gave me a PhD, just like some institution gave that dumb motherfucker a degree. Getting the degree doesn’t mean either of it necessarily earned it, or that our opinions are reasonable enough, not without having more experts challenge our points of view in peer-review. And not when there are studies beyond my field where someone else is better adept at speaking to that topic than I am. It’d be like me saying, “I’m a doctor, so I can perform surgery”: no, I can give a lecture on Frankenstein, I can’t literally be Dr. Stein!)

So, if you wanted a quick and easy fix to this: don’t have an arc where they say that such anti-heteromorph bigotry is primarily in the rural areas. 

Forgive my limited scope, living almost all of my life in the United States and never going outside of it or Canada--that means I’m not a fair enough person to remark as well as I want to about racial and political topics in Japan. But from where I sit in the United States, having grown up and lived in primarily urban and suburban areas--hell no, bigotry isn’t primarily in the rural United States, it’s fucking part of the United States, across all parts of the country. In my college and grad school years, I wasn’t called “faggot” by homophobes in some rural area--that was in major urban cities. I didn’t see the Confederate flag just in rural areas--I had to see that fucking flag flown through by rednecks in my urban neighborhood high school, by rednecks who weren’t even attending my high school, not only because they were racist sacks of shit but because they saw that one assistant principal was a Black man (who went to Tuskegee University), and one assistant principal was a white woman, and they decided to “own” them by putting up that emblem of bigotry to stick to anyone who wasn’t white and a man. 

And that’s not even getting into having a family member around my age as a kid whose parents condoned him not only having the Confederate flag but the fucking Nazi swastika--thank fucking Christ my parents were like, “Oh, hell no, those people are no longer family, and our kid is not hanging out with a fucking Nazi.” 

(I write all of this, and I sadly realize how much groundwork was set up long before 2016 had people voting for a fucking orange Nazi for the White House.) 

It is obvious in MHA that this anti-heteromorph prejudice does extend to the urban areas. The manga sort of acknowledges that. Sure, Mineta didn’t mean anything when he said Shoji looked like an octopus--but he still said it, maybe out of admiration or fetishizing, both of which can be dimensions of prejudice. Pony may be from the United States and maybe kind of country in her demeanor--but she still made that remark to Shoji when she got to UA. In the English dub, I was so happy how the anime was handling just how much the characters accepted each other regardless their appearance--and then they have Jiro calling Tokoyami a “bird-brain,” which, at the time, no, that doesn’t fit her character or this setting at all--but in retrospect, after seeing the anti-heteromorph hostilities, and what happens to Jiro and Tokoyami in the fight against All For One, sure, fine, whatever, let that stupid remark stay in. (If that was not just in the English dub but in the original Japanese, I better hear Jiro apologize for that remark.) 

But so far that is a lot of rambling on my part, so let me get back to your actual questions: 

You point out how the anti-heteromorph attitude in the manga was reserved largely for the Klan expy in that one chapter. As I said before, this is built upon a bit more to show systematic oppression of heteromorphs in both the main manga and in the Vigilantes spinoff: size, shape, lack of standardized clothing (although immediate alterations are available for, say, Ojiro, and from Detnerat), Mount Lady largely stuck in the country in school due to her giant Quirk (and then causing property damage, losing money, losing insurance coverage due to her Quirk...), Todoroki’s awful remark to the dog-headed police chief. It is definitely ramped up in starts and stops--until Horikoshi throws in so much of it right at this chapter that, rather than feeling like a logical build up, comes across as hitting the gas to rush to all of this new information.

It’s not even like those details, like the historical events that one PLF heteromorph is shouting, were brought up in the light novels, the films, the video games, encyclopedias, Horikoshi’s end-of-volume notes--you know, places that aren’t quite the main story, but you could excuse as, “It was brought up before, you just had to look for it.” It was there, I did look for it, I mentioned a lot of it--but this is a rush of a story that does not seem as well structured as it could be. Maybe the anime could fix that in adaptation…except they did cut Spinner and those Klan expies from the MLA arc, so who knows. 

And I already know how I would have revised this arc to make all of this work better: 

Have Shoji and Koda face off against Spinner during the war arc--that starts the ball rolling on all the anti-heteromorph stuff and building up an actual link between these characters that wasn’t established until now in the manga

Have Spinner in the war arc make an unintentionally splashy presence in that fight that indeed gets attention from heteromorphs

Have Skeptic notice that--and seize upon it

Do _not_ have All For One take over Shigaraki [not just yet, anyway] and instead operate in the shadows and approach Spinner in secret

Have All For One say he wants Shigaraki to stand on his own feet, not on his “father’s” laurels--but that he wants Spinner to watch out for his “boy”

Have All For One say that Spinner just needs more confidence (public speaking skills, charisma)--and power, and that’s when he gives him those Quirks, not just to make him more confident and more powerful, but to protect those he cares about, like Shigaraki, and those like him, who are also heteromorphs

Have the new Quirks initially work out really well for Spinner: he’s more charismatic, more confident, more powerful, inspiring heteromorphs with actual persuasive arguments (even if the results are going to be unethical and horrendous) and logical arguments (including that, yes, sometimes you do break laws and fight back to protect and enforce civil rights)

But as we have with Nagant and Gigantomachia, show that All For One always has an ulterior motive, and that this deal with the devil turns Spinner into that barely cognizant brute who is now easily led around by All For One, Skeptic, and their enablers 

You get all that you deserve in this arc: actually confronting bigotry and how, to protect civil rights, sometimes people do break laws. (Not “stampeding an entire medical ward” break laws or “kill a bunch of people” break laws--good God, no, Spinner’s actions are not fucking justifiable in this arc.)

And you aren’t having All For One already subsuming Shigaraki--you save that for later and have Spinner actually convinced that he is here to protect his friend (seriously, how do you see what All For One is doing to Shigaraki and think, “Sure, I trust this guy to give me Quirks”?).

And you let Spinner actually show he has what it takes to be a leader, if someone just gave him a chance--before you take that all away from him and make it tragic. 

(And yes, my plot points are ripping off the Colonel Jupiter arc from Spectacular Spider-man.) 

Back to your question: you point out how it was already mentioned that anti-heteromorph bigots were a dying breed. I hope my responses point out how that rhetoric doesn’t quite hold up. It depends on what we mean. The PLF person shouting that argument can point to Shoji’s experience as one example: it was confined to the rural areas. And Shoji pretty much said the same thing. But what about Koda? We saw how his parents were treated--were they also in a rural environment when that happened? And while out-and-out bigotry may not be obvious, I hope my remarks about our real lives for many of us in the United States show that out-and-out bigotry doesn’t mean systematic bigotry (lack of resources, moving people out of neighborhoods because you don’t want them there, disablist civil engineering) and more covert forms of bigotry don’t still persist. The Klan and Neo-Nazis have disappeared and reappeared numerous times--because bigotry persisted, just not always in obvious ways (and now are out in the open again and now going by the name “the Republican Party”). 

You point out that it makes sense about bigotry being more persistent in the rural areas: I agree. I may have pointed out how the Confederate flag is flown far outside of the Confederacy, even up in the North, but it makes sense, whether because it’s actually happening or it’s believable, that when you have rural areas, where it is typically harder to get access to infrastructure (not just schools and Internet but also basic means), you lack education and you foster fear and anger that leads to scapegoating, superstition, paranoia, and then bigotry. 

I wish I could say that attacking a kid like Shoji and trying to kill him seems like a bit too much--but we know how many young people have been the victims of violence, due to someone seeing their appearance and thinking, regardless how young they are, that that person is a threat. (For all my talk earlier about how “appearances are not the start or end of bigotry,” yeah, I also can’t ignore how many evil dumb motherfuckers have seen a Black child, thought that Black child was a threat, and were using appearances to confirm their biases to justify violence upon a freaking child.) 

So, again, I’m here in the United States, reading a comic by a Japanese creator and set in Japan--but it is also a far distant future of Japan, and it is not as if Japan, like the United States, has not committed atrocities against marginalized people on the basis of their appearance, culture, race, and religion, whether by war or by systematic oppression. And Horikoshi knows this: there is a reason he changed the name of All For One’s doctor. 

But what I don’t know is what Horikoshi is thinking with Shoji, and whether there is a historical analogue to this, too. Like I said a moment ago, given the history of anti-Black racism, where indeed Black children and teens were lynched, I can find that horrifically believable. And given Rock Lock’s presence in this arc, that choice of including that character in this fight seems to be to emphasize that there is a racialized reading. (And, as a white person, I don’t know how to write Rock Lock’s presence here: I see arguments positing that maybe you have Rock Lock admit he understands this kind of bigotry--but that risks making the comparison too one-to-one, as well as having one of the few Black characters in your story taking on this task. And I’ve read arguments theorizing, “Maybe racism has ended by this point in MHA,” which--nah, if these fuckers are hating on heteromorphs, I’m not optimistic that human progress has moved beyond racism.) I just don’t know where Horikoshi is going with it, and while I see a common link there, reading far more into it risks doing a disservice to interpreting MHA and a disservice to discussing real-world tragedies and injustices and a disservice to the lives of actual people. 

[alwaysmarveling]

Call Me Back

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader

Warnings: death, a small sexual innuendo, and lots of commas and long sentences

Word Count: 3.4k

Summary: You and Wanda promised each other you would always call to check in, and Wanda’s going to do her best to keep that promise, no matter what.

The first time you met Wanda was… well, when was the first time you met Wanda? Was it when wisps of red flashed in front of your eyes, projecting images so horrific and lifelike that you all but collapsed in a heartbeat? Or was it when she stepped forward to shake your hand timidly, grief and determination filling the witch as she promised to make up for it?

“I- I wouldn’t have done it if I… we were just trying…”

“Don’t worry about it,” you had told her with a smile before confiding in her about your own missteps, how you’d wreaked havoc on all of New York with your powers of body modification after your own parents died, how Fury finally got the Avengers to catch you, and how they quickly became your new family.

-

“You mean they really almost burned the kitchen down trying to make you a birthday cake?” The brunette giggled later that night as you recounted the story of your sixteenth birthday, the two of you sitting comfortably beside each other on the living room sofa.

“Yup. And when Nat showed up with an ice cream cake fifteen minutes later to find smoke in the living room, Sam told me she freaked on everyone.”

“Excuse me, Y/N, I did not do any ‘freaking.’ God, is that what you teenagers are calling it now?” The two of you erupted into laughter, and the redhead could do nothing more than shake her head, a smirk playing on her lips no matter how hard she tried to conceal it.

---

Much like Nat and Steve predicted, the two of you became fast friends. You sat next to each other on movie nights, sang karaoke in your room when you thought everyone else was asleep (if they weren’t awake when you started, they certainly were once you were thirty seconds into Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”), and, much to Steve’s dismay, when you finally became confident with your ability to grow wings on your back, snuck out regularly for late-night flights around the compound.

But you also insisted on being there for Wanda’s training sessions, even if it meant you had to wake up an hour earlier. You cradled the witch in your arms when she woke up night after night with an aching hole in her heart before you eventually insisted you guys just share a room. And you promised her, above everything else, that when you went out for anything, whether it be a quick grocery run or a month-long mission, you’d let her know you were okay.

You knew the promise she pleaded you to make was a result of the anxiety she suffered. She’d lost everyone she cared about; if a simple text or call was enough to put her at ease, you’d do it in a heartbeat.

---

“Wanda,” you’d whispered, the teen immediately sitting up straight when she’d heard the cracks in your voice. “I- I don’t know what to do. I’m safe, but...” She told you to stay there, don’t move, she’d be there in minutes. And, with your brain unable to function enough to think of any other option, you listened.

Her heart broke at the sight of you, your arms wrapped tightly around yourself and your head hung, you feet occasionally kicking the wet sidewalk. The neon sign of the restaurant your date had promised to meet you at illuminated one side of your face, allowing her to see the tears that you had tried but failed so desperately to hold in. But the witch didn’t let you see her emotions, instead whisking you away from the unfamiliar section of the city, brushing the tears off of your cheeks and bringing you to the twenty-four-hour diner for milkshakes. She made a fool of herself in front of the waitstaff until tears flowed from your eyes once again, but this time, the crystalline drops rolled down your raised cheeks, aching from smiling too hard. 

-

When you had a panic attack during training because you couldn’t get one of your body modification attempts to reverse—”Wanda, I cannot be stuck with claws for hands, I can’t!”—she refused to let you hang up until the steady sounds of her own breathing calmed you down, the sharp nails receding and making way for the soft pads of your very human fingertips.

-

And when she called you after the mission in Lagos, you worked tirelessly to complete your own solo mission as soon as you could. You returned to the tower to find her holed up in the bedroom, news broadcasts playing nonstop on the television to remind her of the horrors she’d committed; accident or not, she told you, she needed to hold herself accountable. You simply shook your head at her, holding out your hand without another word. She didn’t take it at first.

“You can’t fix it, Y/N. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you.” She was expecting you to fight her back on it, yell at her and demand that she take your hand, or perhaps you’d go the complete opposite direction and leave her alone, let her be swallowed by guilt and anguish, rip open old wounds and form new ones as she thought of how she tore apart families that were probably much like her own. You did neither.

Wanda’s green eyes remained fixed on your outstretched hand. You stayed silent, one eyebrow cocked as if daring her to see what would happen should she choose not to take it. It was only then that she realized, for once in her life, the person she most loved wasn’t leaving; the support she so desperately needed wouldn’t be yanked away from her when it was mere centimeters from her grasp.

So she rested her fingers in the palm of your hand, and you pulled her out to the balcony where the two of you had spent night after night watching the stars instead of sleeping, making up funny names for each of them and rolling in fits of laughter that only came to those delirious and sleep-deprived enough to understand just what was so funny. Except, this time, instead of dropping into the oversized beanbag chair that was the usual spot of your stargazing shenanigans, she watched curiously as you removed your shirt. Her mouth dropped as you closed your eyes and allowed the white feathers to emerge from beside the ridges of your spine. Although it was a process she’d seen several times before, your modifications had never ceased to amaze her, and your angel-like wings had always been her favorite. The witch admired the additions as you allowed them to flap slowly, once, twice, before turning back to her.

“Let’s go,” you finally spoke, the order gentle but leaving no room for negotiation.

“Where are we going?”

“Away.” That was enough for the brunette, who squeezed your hand before following your lead. She allowed you to guide her through the maze of clouds and couldn’t help but smile softly as the sun’s rays hit your face at just the right angle. You wore the exhaustion from your recent mission on your face, and streaks of dirt covered the bruises that she was sure littered your body. But she was content, in awe, because you were you. You didn’t put up walls to hide your scars from the world, didn’t use passive-aggressiveness to hide the passion that burned in your heart. At the end of the day, you were good, purely and truly good. You were an angel; even the sun knew it.

What Wanda didn’t realize, but what you taught her that night, as she sat surrounded by sunflowers, the moon, thousands of gleaming stars, and the tickle of your feathers as your wing pulled her close to you, was that she was one too.

“I’m glad you called me,” you whispered, your eyes not leaving the open sky as you pointed out a particularly bright spot. “I’m gonna call that one… Philip. He looks regal, real proud. Look at him, so much brighter than the others, and he knows it too.” The witch breathed out a soft chuckle, stroking her fingers over your feathers as she responded.

“I’m glad I called you too. And I think Philip is a good name for him. What about that one?”

“Hmm… Walter? He’s a bit more serious, I think. But you see the one next to him?” You waited until you got a nod from the girl before continuing. “That’s his sister. She makes sure he has fun, even when he says he doesn’t want to. But you name her, Wands. Naming stars is a two-person job, you know.” She squeezed the elbow that you nudged her with before giving in.

“Alright… that’s Delia. And, yeah, she’s the best. The life of the party. Walter keeps her grounded, though,” Wanda added, to which you agreed to with a hum. You two fell quiet after that, enjoying the comfortable silence and looking up at the twinkling lights, some of them gaining names and stories, others waiting to be named another night.

“Wanda?”

“Yeah?”

“You call me if you ever need me, okay? I know we started this with me calling you, but I’m here for you too.” The witch met your eyes with a firm bob of her head, but you continued, desperate to make sure she understood. “And if I don’t pick up at first, you call me back, okay? Call me until I respond, promise?”

“I promise,” Wanda soothed gently. “I will.”

“Okay, good, good. Because,” Wanda felt a brush of your feathers against her upper arm as you fluttered your wings, slightly agitated, “because I think I love you. I mean, um, I know. I know I love you. I love you. Yeah, I-” Wanda shut you up with a kiss, her lips pressed urgently against yours. And if you hadn’t lost your breath from your rambling or your declaration of love to the girl of your dreams, then you most definitely lost it as your lips melted into hers, in the comforting warmth of her palm against your cheek, and in the words that left her mouth as you finally pulled apart, breathless.

“I will, Y/N, I promise. Because I love you too.”

---

People thought you were inseparable before you started dating, but they all realized how wrong they were after that night. The two twin beds quickly became a queen-sized mattress, sideline support during training sessions became fierce yet playful spars, and the private giggles you guys shared grew tenfold. Fury wasn’t exactly happy that his unofficial daughter was now dating, but he was pleased by how efficiently the two of you worked together, which led you to this moment, the two of you covering the Quinjet while waiting for the rest of the Avengers to finish their business inside the massive Hydra base. With Wanda covering the ground and you in the sky, flying with the white-feathered wings that Wanda loved so dearly, the two of you held off the swarms of Hydra agents relatively well. With a small break in between incoming agents, Wanda looked up to check on you, but she was a moment too late. Before she could even think to warn you, the pure feathers she loved to brush her fingers through fell from the sky, the white stained with red, your screams ripping through her eardrums.

No one, including Wanda, had time to think as she exploded with a new rage, one that hadn’t run through her in years. One that she hoped she would never experience again, but here she was. And there you were.

While you were held in the air by her signature red mist, the opposing agents fell to the ground. She didn’t care about their screams, only yours. And with them all dealt with, she could turn to you, rushing you both into the Quinjet and yelling for the other Avengers to get back here, now.

But her efforts were futile. She could press down on the wounds all she wanted, beg for you to come back until her voice was nothing more than a whisper, but nothing would work. You were gone the instant the missile had hit you, and as much as Wanda wanted to deny the truth, she knew it just as much as your other teammates did when they rushed onto the Quinjet. You were gone before you could say a single goodbye.

---

The first time Wanda called was from your shared bedroom. She dialed your number before tracing the pillow where your head would have laid, running her fingers over the cartoon carrots that covered the comforter. The yellow bedding set was a gag gift Tony had gotten the two of you when you got your new bed.

“You know, since I figure the two of you will be going at it like rabbits,” he winked before getting immediately smacked in the back of the head by Steve.

“They will be doing no such thing,” the supersoldier had chastised him with a roll of his eyes. “God, Stark, sometimes I forget you have a brain when you say such stupid things.”

But you loved it, telling Wanda, “The carrots remind me of you, Bunny.” And how could she return the present when you were being so sweet about it? But the sheets didn’t make her smile in the same way they once did because you were gone. No one was there to tease her about the way her nose wiggled much like the little white fluffy creatures or promise to get her carrots from the market the next day.

The call went to voicemail, and as bittersweet as it was, Wanda savored it because it was you. Your voice. But the beep came far too soon, and your turn was done. So she spoke. 

“Y/N, hey, it’s me, Wanda. I, um, I love you. I’ll always love you, yeah?” The witch put the phone down, thinking that was all she could bear to say as the lump in her throat ballooned in size and hot tears filled her eyes. But just before time was up, her hand shot up to press the device against her ear again. “Call me back, milaya.”

---

The second time Wanda called was from the balcony. The brunette eyed the sparkling diamonds that filled the sky, wondering how you could be gone when, the last time she was here, you were right there beside her, laughing over the boys’ latest shenanigans and Ned, the newly named star. 

Now, the beanbag chair felt too big, too empty without another person sitting next to her. Without you. So she dialed your number, the only number she bothered to learn by heart, and waited for the dulcet tones of your voice. As the dial tone rang, she ran one hand over the white feather that laid gingerly in her lap. Natasha had given it to her along with several others a few days after your death. Each of the team members had one to remember you by, but the spy had picked out the biggest and most brilliant ones to give to Wanda.

“I know how much her wings meant to you-” Natasha stiffened as Wanda threw her arms around her. But the witch didn’t care, her tears soaking the redhead’s shirt as she tried to find the words to thank her. She couldn’t, but it was okay. Natasha knew anyway. Wanda had little time to reflect on the memory before her face brightened at the sound of your voice.

“Hi, this is Y/N-

“And her girlfriend, Wanda! She’s taken, so don’t even think about it, you jerk!” Wanda smiled slightly at your jubilant laughter, remembering how you’d pushed her away for interrupting you.

“I’m not available right now, but leave me your name, number, and message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay? Talk to you soon.” The witch’s eyes closed slightly as the greeting ended with a spell of your giggles before it was interrupted by that damn beep. God, how she hated that beep. Nevertheless, she took a breath and spoke out into the clear night sky, looking up at the stars as she did so.

“Hi, lyubov moya, it’s me. Wanda. I’m calling you back, just like you told me to. I’m not okay. I need you. I love you.” Her breath caught in her throat, forcing her to pause for a moment, but she forced herself to keep going a second later. “Sam and Bucky did the stupidest thing today. Nat and Steve were all over their asses. You should’ve seen it. I miss you. Please, call me back. I’ll tell you all about it.”

---

The last time Wanda called was from the sunflower field. The two of you hadn’t been here since the night you told her you loved her. In fact, it took Wanda several hours to find it since she hadn’t been paying much attention to the route the first time you came.

Once again, the night was clear, the stars lighting up the dark canvas with their radiance. She missed the feeling of your wing wrapped around her, of your presence next to her. But she had one of your feathers in her fingers and your voice in her ear, and to ask for more would be greedy, right?

“Hi, angel. It’s Wanda. I’m calling you back to leave a message, but I can’t do it again after this because I don’t want your voicemail to fill up, okay? I’m sorry, I know I’m being selfish, but I need to be able to hear your voice, so I can’t let it fill up. But I haven’t forgotten you, I promise I haven’t. I never will. I’m still-” Wanda swallowed, a fighting effort to calm the waver in her voice. “I’m still not okay, but I’m trying. For you. But I’m not okay, I need you to call me back. I’ve named one up there Halia, but her twin sister needs a name. And naming stars is a two-person job, you know.” The witch sniffed once as the corner of her lip curved up slightly, remembering the playfulness in your voice when you’d first said the line. “Call me back, Y/N, please.”

With the message over, Wanda clutched the phone to her chest, her breaths becoming faster and shallower as she closed her eyes, trying to accept the knowledge that it’d be the last time she’d ever leave a message, the knowledge that she was really losing you… the knowledge that she already lost you.

---

Months went by. Wanda wasn’t sure how they did, but they did. The first sign of it was the first Halloween without you, as she saw the other couples dressing up in matching costumes that you would’ve loved, costumes you would’ve pointed out to Wanda with an excited bounce and told her you’d have to wear next year. The next was Thanksgiving, when Wanda ran through the list of everything she was thankful for and came up short when she thought about the people she still had left. And then it was Christmas, and Valentine’s Day, and the first day of summer.

And while Wanda did her best to move on, she always found herself under the stars, dialing your number. She sat on the balcony, in the sunflower field, wherever she could see the sky, and she listened to your voice telling her that you’d call her back as soon as you could, always forcing herself to hang up a second before the beep could cut you off. Wanda named every other star she saw, leaving the ones in between for you and hoping that you’d approve of the names she chose.

“I’m naming that one Angel for you, Y/N,” Wanda murmured. “It’s even brighter than Philip. It’s the brightest star in the sky. I know you think it’s silly to name things after people, but this one’s just special, so you’re gonna have to make an exception, okay?” The brunette’s lips stopped moving, but her eyes stayed wide open as she watched the star as if, if she watched it long enough, studied it hard enough, you would materialize from its luminescence. As if you would come back to her. But when you didn’t, she finally allowed her watering eyes to rest, her eyelids drooping to surround her in darkness.

“I’m not okay, Y/N.” The witch’s voice was softer than it had ever been, more tired. But this time, there was no one to whisk her off and make her forget the heaviness of it all. “I need you so badly. I love you so much. I always will. But, please, angel, call me back.”

[snackhobi]

a human touch, part I

Part [1] / 1.5 / 2

(masterlist here)

pairing: taehyung x f!reader / word count: 13.3k / genre: robot!taehyung/virgin!reader, fluff, future smut (NSFW, 18+)

summary: everyone knows that androids don’t think, or feel, or have emotions. they’re not human, after all. so when a two hour session with a sex android ends up with nothing more than a nice conversation, you think that’s the first and last time you’ll see v. 

then he turns up at your door. 

warnings: talk of sex work (taehyung is a sex android), implied physical harassment (mentions of bruising), cursing/explicit language, mentions of alcohol, honestly this is a lot softer than these warnings would make you think I swear 🤧

a/n: I started writing this fic like 2/3 months ago and then put it on hiatus bc god it was kicking my entire ass. but ya girl is finally back to working on it! it’ll be two parts, because this fic is a big one! I hope to have the next chapter out next week/the week after (but no promises kdsflkfdfsdf) thank you @hobi-gif​ for loving this fic so wholeheartedly and supporting me while I struggled with it, queen shit ONLY. note: this is loosely a detroit: become human au but you don’t have to be familiar with it at all!

Here are the three things you know about the Eden Club.

One: it’s a sex club. Everyone knows that. Besides, even if they didn’t, all it would take is a single look—the soft blue lighting that shines out from the windows, the screens behind the glass that flash images of shifting and undulating bodies, the heavy beat of music that pulsates from the building and out into the night air; everything murmurs of the promised pleasures that are held within. 

Two: it’s a sex club entirely staffed by androids. Androids make better lovers, according to the ads. They might look human but they don’t have free will like you do—anything you ask for, you’re given without question or reproach. They can’t say no to you. They’re entirely at your command.

Three: you don’t ever want to go to the Eden Club. It’s not that you have anything against androids—because you don’t—but you feel bad for the ones who are owned by the club, even if they’re literally only built and programmed to serve humans. It just feels… wrong.

And here’s the fourth thing you’ve just learned about the club, much to your dismay: you are about to head inside it.

“When you said we were going to a club, I thought we were going dancing,” you whine. “I never would have come out if I’d know you meant here.”

You’ve been staring up at the cursive pink neon sign for a while now, the looping letters of Eden Club shining out in the dark evening air, and you really, really wish you weren’t here. You’ve dressed for a night of dancing and drinking and now you feel woefully uncomfortable, your high heels and short skirt almost as scandalous as the outfits the androids are wearing when they slide across the huge screens.

“That’s why we didn’t tell you which club it was.” Seulgi rolls her eyes and once again tries to tug you towards the building with the arm that’s looped with your own. Just out of arm’s reach, Irene holds your bag hostage. “Come on, your session is going to start soon!”

“My session?” Your voice is an incredulous shrill and Seulgi uses the momentary distraction to finally pull you forward. You stumble a little but catch your balance just as you make your way past the bouncer, who’s been watching the three of you impassively since you got here. “What do you mean, my session?”

“For your birthday, duh. We booked you a private room!”

The inside has the same, sleek neon aesthetic as the outside, but instead of images of androids on a screen, these ones are real and standing in front of you—swinging themselves around glowing poles, rolling their hips and swaying their bodies, while others wait patiently in glass pods that line the walls, leaning towards onlookers and moving as tantalisingly as possible. All ready to be rented at a whim.

Their designs are varied and different but they’re all incredibly beautiful. The only feature they all share is the small, blue LED circle on the side of their temple, light spinning and shining as they take the world in around them. A visual reminder to the world that these aren’t flesh and blood humans: they’re synthetic, man-made machines.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so uncomfortable in my life.” You desperately try to avoid the eyes of a nearby android who’s staring at you from behind glass, trying to subtly catch your attention. Unlike you, though, all the other patrons here are shameless in their perusal, scanning the selection of androids on display and watching as they dance and move and bat their eyelashes. “Why did you ever think I’d want to come to a sex club for my birthday?”

“Remember Valentine’s Day? You said that instead of flowers or chocolate you’d rather just be dicked down,” Irene says. “Besides, you’ve never been in a relationship or had a fling for as long as we’ve known you, and you moved to the company, what… three years ago?”

Your smile is pained. You’ve never been in a relationship or had a fling full stop; you’ve only kissed a few people and that’s it. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed, and you’ve gotten Very Good at avoiding questions about your complete lack of a love life, so no one realises exactly how inexperienced you are. People just assume that you’ve had sex in the past and you make no attempts at correcting them. You’re charismatic and pretty but you’ve just… never met someone who you’ve really been compatible with.

Even without the reservations you have about the Eden Club, you don’t want your first time to be with a sexbot—you’d at least like to have an emotional connection, you know?

“I was joking about getting dicked down! You laughed, I laughed, we all laughed! Remember?” You move so a pink-haired android can brush past, her hips swaying as she leads a customer into a side room. You catch a flash of the interior before the door slides shut behind them—the silken sheets on the large bed, the scattered pillows, the dim multi-coloured lights. “Couldn’t you have just bought me some socks? Or some soap? Get a refund and put the money on a gift card and I’ll buy myself the aforementioned socks and soap, saves you both the hassle. Please?”

Seulgi’s arm is still locked with your own, and for all that she looks small and slim, her grip is as strong as iron. You may as well be handcuffed to her. “Trust me, you’ll be singing our praises at the end of tonight,” she proclaims. “Besides, they don’t do refunds.”

You sigh. You might not know much about the club but you do know it’s expensive. The androids here are built to be the perfect sexual partner, all sorts of bells and whistles hidden under their synthetic skin to bring you to the absolute heights of pleasure, so they’re not exactly cheap to build or buy or maintain. It’s why people come to the club instead of just buying their own sexbots—because it’s infinitely more affordable.

“Okay, I can accept the ‘no refund’ thing,” you say. “But can’t one of you take my place instead? I… ah. I feel kind of weird about this.”

“Don’t worry Y/n, it’s fine! The androids have programmes for everything. You can take it as fast or as slow as you like.” Irene’s voice is soothing but then she pauses. “Also it’s booked in your name so we can’t take your place.”

“Wait, what?” Your eyes are wide. However, before you can put a voice to the complaints that are lining themselves up on your tongue, Seulgi’s arm slides out of your own so she can beckon someone over. 

“Oh, look, it’s the android we chose for you! Over here!”

You glance away from Irene and all protestations instantly die on your lips. The lighting of the club softens the android in shades of magenta and teal but even so his beauty is bright and blinding: he’s breathtaking, from his perfect nose to his perfect mouth to the perfect line of his jaw, dusty brown hair deliciously tousled as it hangs just over his piercing blue eyes, which you notice are scanning over you. He looks effortlessly attractive and yet entirely put together at the same time, almost ethereal in his beauty.

No human could ever look this good.

“Hi.” His voice is low and deep, but somehow warm and friendly; despite your nerves you feel somewhat soothed. “Are you the lucky birthday girl?”

Irene and Seulgi both look giddy. You’ve been stunned into silence, unable to respond. Unlike the other androids you’ve seen so far, who’ve all been in similar variations of underwear or lingerie, the man in front of you is fully dressed, a loose metallic button-down tucked into unnecessarily tight leather jeans—the outfit has clearly been curated for the club, every reflective surface shimmering and refracting the lights that skate across their surface. The glittering scales of a barracuda before it moves in to strike and swallow you whole.

“Yes, yes, it’s her! This is Y/n! Y/n, this is V,” Irene gushes as you remain mute. "Do you like his outfit? We spent ages picking it out.”

You kind of want to die. Just a little. “Yep. It’s, uh, great.” Your mouth is dry when you finally speak. “Hi, V.”

V gives you a small smile. “Hello Y/n. Can I scan your ID, please?”

Irene finally hands your bag back and you silently slide your ID out and into V’s hand—oh, God, those are some big hands. Jesus.

The small LED ring on the side of V’s forehead pulses yellow as his eyes dart over the information on your ID card (as well as the incredibly unflattering photo on it) before it returns to its customary pale blue. “Perfect.”

You’ve just finished putting your ID away when V’s hand slides into yours, fingers slotting between your own; they feel cool against your overheated skin. Your nervousness is obvious, from your wide eyes to your sudden stiffness, and he smiles.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll look after you.”

You give Irene and Seulgi one final, wide-eyed look as V leads you away. Both girls are grinning as they wave goodbye. “We'll be back later! Enjoy your two hours!”

“Two hours?” You wheeze, but then you walk around a pillar and slide out of sight. 

V is leading you deeper into the club, past doors flooded with different shades of neon: the red room, the blue room, the pink room. You’d normally be gawping at the interior design, how the floor shines underneath your feet and how the walls are rippling with colour and shifting shapes, how the criss-crossed lights throw dots and lines of colour over your skin as you pass through each doorway—but you can’t look away from how small your hand looks in V’s, transfixed by how real his skin feels.

“After you, please,” he says.

You finally wrench your eyes away from your joint hands. Seems like you have the purple room tonight. The door has opened at V’s touch, and when you step inside the lights flicker to life—white and violet LEDs that paint the room in chiaroscuro brushstrokes, deepening the shadows and highlighting the vibrancy of the satin sheets.

“Woah,” you say, momentarily distracted. You’re too busy taking in the details with wide eyes to notice the quiet hum of the door sliding shut behind you, pausing when you spot the glittering array of bottles lined up on a mini-bar against the wall. “This is really pretty, wow.”

“Not as pretty as you.”

You jump at the sensation of a warm, large hand sliding up the skin of your back and over your shoulder. You meep as you instinctively shy away from it, turning around to come face to face with V, who’s dark-eyed and intent, LED on his temple pulsating as he watches you.

“Haha! Uh, thanks?” Your voice is high and only grows higher when V takes a step forward. He must have undone the top buttons of his shirt when you weren’t looking, because the material has fallen open and you can see far more of his collarbones and chest than before, his skin warm and honeyed, like it’s been impressed with gold leaf. Lord have mercy on your soul. “How about a drink? Would you like a drink? I could kill for some water right now!”

You slip out of his reach and scuttle over to the mini-bar, shrugging your small bag off your shoulder so it doesn’t swing into the glasses as you start to shuffle through them. You try to ignore the shaking of your hands. “Gin, vodka, whiskey,” you mutter. “No water? Really?”

You startle again when V appears at your side, but this time he’s careful to make sure you can see him before he touches you. He slides his fingers over your wrist as he gently pulls your hand off a bottle of rum.

“Y/n,” he says. You glance away from the tray of drinks and directly into those beautiful eyes of his—his gaze is lethal. You go weak at the knees. “Let me take care of you, gorgeous.”

The peal of laughter you let out is uncomfortable and high-pitched. “No, really, I’m fine! I’m just super thirsty right now!”

“Your heart is racing.” V turns your hand over and traces his fingers across the pulse in your wrist; androids can be built to be hypersensitive to the world around them, able to perceive everything in an instant, and you know that sexbots will have been designed to read how aroused their human owners are. Which V proves with the next words out of his mouth. “Your blood pressure is rising, your breathing is growing faster, your pupils are dilating and—” he sniffs lightly, engaging his olfactory senses—“you’re getting wet.”

You clamp your legs together, abruptly embarrassed.  It’s easy to feel aroused when there’s a beautiful man—ah, android—staring at you with hunger, not even considering your surroundings right now, which all scream of a room that’s designed purely for carnal pleasure. Anyone would be turned on. 

(You, however, are more than just turned on. You feel like your insides are about to go supernova, overheated and overwhelmed; no one’s ever looked at you like this or touched you like this, their every motion whispering sex, sex, sex.)

“Okay, yes, those things are all true,” you admit, voice shaking.

V looks confused. “So why don’t you want me to touch you?”

You’ve been told that androids don’t feel the same way humans do, and that their expressions and reactions have been programmed to mimic human ones because otherwise they seem too robotic and it makes consumers uncomfortable—but despite knowing this, you’ve never been able to see any android as anything other than a person just like you. They’re just so lifelike it’s hard not to. Even if it’s just all circuitry and lines of code. 

“Well,” you say. You swallow. You’re aroused, yes, but: “Do you want to touch me?”

V’s long lashes flutter as he blinks. “I have been programmed for your pleasure,” he says slowly, unsure if that’s the answer you want to hear. It’s clearly a sentence he’s used to reciting.

“Sure, but do you want to do this? You know, what about your pleasure? You’re lovely, V, you’re definitely the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, but I—I don’t really feel like you can technically consent, because… well, because you can’t say no to me.” You might not have prior sexual experience, and it would be so easy to give yourself over to someone who knows what they're doing and can ease you into things—but you would never force that on anyone, android or not. “So I’m not going to ask you to do anything. We can just sit and have a drink and chat or something?”

V looks stunned. The LED on his temple pulsates, flickering yellow as he tries to process new information. His hand has gone still against your wrist, which he’s still lightly gripping, and his arms start to droop.

“Androids don’t need to drink or eat,” he says eventually. His LED is still yellow and spinning.

“Oh, right! Sorry, I always forget.” You don’t own a house android, you never have, so you’re not well versed in the nuances of how they work. “Well, how about I pour you a glass anyway? So you’re not left out?”

You slip your hand out of his loose grasp to open two tiny cans of tonic water and pour them into separate glasses. V takes a seat on the edge of the bed and you can see the obvious uncertainty on his face, how he’s out of his depth. You can’t imagine that many people spend money for a session with an android as pretty as V and then end up doing nothing with that time. 

The pillows all have satin cases and keep sliding against each other uselessly when you try to construct a good support to lean against. V’s still clutching onto his small glass as he watches you fuss with them before you give up, flopping backwards to slurp down your drink and look back at him. The expression on his face is a little funny but mostly sad. It’s like if he’s not being alluring or sexy then he doesn’t know what to do with himself and rather than some sort of incubus he looks like a lost child, in spite of his overwhelming and exquisite beauty; your arousal ebbs and is replaced with empathy, melancholy at the life he’s been created for.

It's just depressing, really.

You break the silence as your final mouthful of tonic water fizzes on your tongue. “Why is your name V?”

V looks away from the drink he’s holding—he leaves no fingerprints against the glass—and lifts his free hand, a peace sign that he turns away from you before fitting his fingers around his lips and lapping the air with his tongue, a crude simulation of cunnilingus.

“Oh.” Your face heats up. “Uh. I see.”

His LED has returned to calming sapphire, quiet ocean waves. When he looks at you, though his eyes are still piercingly blue, his face seems softer, calm, though still unsure. “You have an hour and a half remaining of your booked session,” he says, somewhat tentatively. “Is there… anything you would like me to do for you?”

“Mm, thank you, but I’m good.” The satin pillows are surprisingly soft and you find yourself unwinding as you stay leaned back, melting into a puddle. You're much less nervous now that V isn’t trying to initiate foreplay and you give him a smile. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

V straightens before he launches into what sounds like a sentence from a user manual. “I am a model TH700, an advanced sex android with functional genitals and the capacity to engage in any sexual activity from simple intercourse to—”

You cough loudly, interrupting his spiel. “Uh, that’s lovely, but I meant you specifically, not your, um, model type?”

“Me specifically?” Confusion and uncertainty reappear on his face. “I am equipped with the same functionalities as the other androids available at the Eden Club.”

He’s staring at you, lost. You can’t help but feel another twinge of sadness, sharp and sour at the back of your throat.

“Okay, uh. Why don’t we start simple. What’s your favourite colour?”

His LED starts to whirl again, a ring of pale sunlight that signals his struggle to compute the question. “My… favourite colour?”

“Yes, the one you think is the prettiest. Or the one you like to look at the most. There’s no wrong answer, you can choose any one that you like. I change my mind all the time. There are just so many cool colours, you know?”

(Androids aren’t designed to have free will or the capacity for original thought. These two facts are warring in V’s mind—you’ve asked him a question, which he’s programmed to answer, but he also isn’t programmed to have an opinion, so he can’t have a colour that he prefers. This simple query that most people could answer in a heartbeat is sending his mind into a meltdown, a gordian knot he can’t unravel.)

You’re alarmed when you see his LED briefly flash bright scarlet, interrupting the circling honey that’s been shining against his skin. They only turn red if an android is badly damaged or suffering from a severe malfunction. Oh, god, have you broken him?

“V.” You sit up, panicked. “Are you alright?”

Just as you grasp his shoulder, the LED on his temple goes still, flicking from burning fire back to cool water. 

“Purple.”

You blink. V’s finally looked away from you and is staring at the wall, at one of the lights that shimmers violet—there’s a tiny smile on his face, tentative, but it’s nothing like the smiles you’ve seen from him so far. It’s less of a perfect curve, and more of a square, boxy on his face, and this one actually reaches his eyes. It looks genuine. 

You think it suits him better.

“Purple’s a lovely colour.”  The material of V’s shirt is silky and glides under your fingers when you realise you’re still touching him. You give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder before leaning back. “Hey, did you know that when they first made purple dye, they made it from sea snails? They needed thousands and thousands of them. It was incredibly expensive, and only the richest people could afford it, so that’s why it’s associated with royalty and nobility. Cool, right? Not for the snails though.”

V’s eyes flicker away from the purple light and settle on your face. He looks curious, which is an expression you’ve never seen on an android before. “They made it from snails?”

“Yeah! It wasn’t actually bright purple, though, it was more of a reddish hue.”

You launch into an explanation behind the history of the colour purple, which turns into the history of colour in textiles and art, which turns into the history of art itself. It’s not often people listen so attentively or ask questions when you recite the things you learned from your art history minor and hours spent reading online, but V concentrates and asks questions and seems curious. 

He pulls his feet onto the bed and the two of you end up cross-legged as you face each other, and he watches as you gesticulate to emphasise your points; his LED dances from blue into yellow each time he learns something new. 

When you see it briefly flash vermilion you stop mid-sentence, stumbling over your words. “You alright?”

“You have five minutes of your session remaining,” V says, and you startle.

“Oh my god, have I been talking for that long?” You glance over your shoulder at the part of the wall that tells the time, the numbers stark white against the lilac interface. “I didn’t even realise! Wow. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to go on at you like that.”

“That’s okay,” he says. That smile is back on his face, the one that scrunches his eyes and shows his teeth; the one that makes him look human. “I liked listening to you.”

There’s a pillow in your lap, one you’d grabbed hold of during your conversation, and you play with the corner of it, suddenly shy. “Um. Thanks. But if my friends ask, can you just say we actually, um, had sex? I don’t think they’d be too impressed if they found out I spent over an hour talking about canvas materials and the use of negative space.”

“Of course. But there’s something missing.” V slides across the mattress towards you. “May I?”

“Sure,” you say, bemused but pliant. V smiles and dips his fingers into his untouched tonic water before lifting them towards your face—and when he runs his hand through your hair you abruptly realise he’s making you look sweaty and rumpled. Like you actually did the deed. 

Your heart rate picks up but you can’t help laughing under his touch, the way he carefully rubs a thumb over your lipstick to smear it, smudging your eyeshadow with delicate fingertips, muddying the palette of colours; by the time V helps you to your feet you look mussed and fucked out but you still rearrange your outfit for good measure, like you’d pulled your clothes back on in a rush.

“Not how I imagined I’d spend tonight, but I had a good time!” You smile at the android who’s still holding your hand. “I hope you did too. Even if I spent most of it talking at you.”

V’s fingers tighten around yours as the door chimes quietly and then slides open, signalling the end of your session. “I enjoyed our time together very much.”

It’s probably in your head, but you’d swear V was walking more slowly than before as he leads you back to the entrance. Almost as if he wants to keep you with him longer. But that’s crazy—androids don’t want things. They literally can’t. It’s not in their programming. That’s why V had sat listening to you: he couldn’t choose to interrupt and ask you to stop, like anyone else would have.

When Seulgi and Irene spot you and how dishevelled you are, both girls look smug. “Seems like you had fun?”

“Oh, yep, absolutely, best birthday present ever, thank you. We had a great time. Right, V?” 

“Your pleasure is my pleasure.” His voice has settled back into its earlier rhythm as he recites his script; gone is the curious man who’d asked you about your favourite artists, replaced with the automaton who exists only to serve. A flicker of sadness churns in your stomach. “We hope to see you again soon.”

The androids here really must be top of the line. V had been convincingly real when you’d been talking, just like a human, but it seems like that’s gone. 

At least, that’s what you think until you’ve turned to leave and V speaks one final time. His voice is warm and low and lovely, eyes soft when you meet his gaze over your shoulder.

“Happy birthday, Y/n,” he murmurs, face beautiful but despondent, but before you can react, he’s gone.

It’s been raining for days on end. The world is painted in smeared shades of blue and green and grey, lines of the city blurring together in the wetness and chill, each drop of rain another shifting brush stroke on still canvas. An impressionist piece that smells of damp concrete and cold lamplight.

Water rushes across the pavements and roads before roiling into the gutters, splashing underfoot as you walk to the entrance of your block of flats. You’re wet up to the knee due to the unavoidable puddles and the pathetic circumference of your umbrella, which only protects your upper body. You really should get a new one. 

“Good evening, Miss L/n.” The android at the door greets you as he always does, heedless of the rain that’s falling onto him. Androids aren’t bothered by the weather the way humans are and he looks as passive as usual, rainwater coiling his hair and beading on his face. “Would you like to scan your key?”

“Evening, Rory! Here you go.” You fumble with the keycard before you tap it against his palm, waiting until his LED flickers yellow and you hear the beep as the door unlocks. “You sure you don’t want my umbrella? The rain is heavier than it was yesterday.”

“I assure you, the rain does not hamper my ability to function and serve. I have been built to withstand inclement weather and do not require additional protective equipment.”

He says the same thing every time but you still feel bad. “Alright, but once I finally remember to get a bigger umbrella you can look after this one for me.”

You leave a line of water behind you as it drips from your sodden umbrella, even though you’d tried to shake the worst of the rain off. You feel damp and sticky and tired and after a long day of work you’re looking forward to a hot bath and some solitude; you love your co-workers, you do, but sometimes they’re just a little too boisterous and you need time alone. Which is why it’s nice that you live by yourself, and now it’s the weekend you have time to recuperate. Wonderful.

The floor of the elevator is slick and slippery from the wet footprints of other tenants and you have to cling onto the metal handrail to ensure you don’t slip, but once you’re in the comfort of your apartment it’s blessedly dry and you spin in delight before promptly shedding your socks and jeans, peeling the damp denim away from your skin with a grimace.

“Bye bye, wet clothes! Hello, bubble bath,” you sing. You’re going to pamper the shit out of yourself. You deserve it.

By the time you clamber out of the bath the water is almost cold and your skin is pruned, but you feel soft and warm and thoroughly relaxed. The water gurgles as it drains away, noisy as the bubbles slide down the plughole, but it doesn’t drown out the noise of a sudden knocking at your front door.

You pause. Water drips from your wet hair and down the back of your neck, a trailing touch over your skin. The other flat on this floor is vacant, the tenants moving out last week, so you don’t know who it could be. You don’t have any repairs scheduled for your pipes or anything—everything is tickety-boo, so it can't be the maintenance android. Oh, shit, maybe it’s someone here to rob you. But they wouldn’t knock on the door then, would they? Unless that's all part of the ruse. You're not a robber, you don't know how they work.

The knocking comes again, faster now. You fumble for your bathrobe, quickly pulling it on to cover up your nakedness before stumbling out of the bathroom. “I’m coming, yeesh, one minute!”

You flick your fingers over the keypad by the side of your door, screen flickering on to show you who’s outside, who’s knocking so frantically on your door this late. It only takes you a split second, even if he has a hood pulled over his head and his wet hair is flopping listlessly into his eyes—those eyes aren’t blue and that hair isn’t brunet but you’d recognise him anywhere.

“V?” You’re incredulous as you swing your door open, staring at the android that’s literally dripping wet as he stands there, coat far too big for him and heavy from the unrelenting rain outside. “Oh my god, you’re absolutely drenched.”

He’s not exactly short, but right now V looks small and lost, folding in on himself even if he’s clearly happy to see you—happy, though androids don’t feel happiness, they don’t feel anything at all, do they? 

Then again, androids don’t wander away from their assigned workplaces and into random apartment blocks, either.

“Y/n.” 

The way he says your name, tentative and scared, sends a crack across your heart. You immediately switch to autopilot and click your tongue before you beckon him inside. You’ve always had a protective nature, and even if you’re confused, your concern trumps it.

“Come in and get that coat off, you’ll catch a cold,” you say without thinking before you realise that it’s not true. Androids can’t get sick. “Do you want to sit down?”

Under the tatty coat is an outfit that’s similar to the one he’d been wearing when you’d first met him. Dark patches of rainwater have soaked into the material, and his shirt looks damaged—there are buttons missing and the stitching is ripped, as if someone had tried to grab him. Unease stirs in your chest.

When V sits on your sofa he looks even smaller. “I’m sorry.” He’s so, so quiet, staring at the floor, as if afraid to look you in the eye, crumpling in on himself like discarded paper.

“V.” Your voice is coloured with concern, and the android finally looks up at your gentle tone, watching as you sit across from him. “Why are you here? What happened?”

There’s a pause. His LED flickers yellow as he goes tense, shoulders bowing inwards. “There was… a client.” His words are low and slow, faltering as they fall into the air. “He was being so rough and saying all the horrible things he wanted to do to me, and all I could smell was his sweat and his breath and his awful cologne and…” V takes in a deep breath. “I said no.”

You go very, very still, but V doesn’t stop. His words come faster now, a stream that rushes from his lips.

“I said no, and he started to yell, he was yelling and grabbing me and I was so, so scared. Humans can do whatever they want and he was so angry, he didn’t care that I was scared, and I just—I just ran.” The LED flashes red with distress, bright hot and vibrant; V’s eyes have dropped to his hands, which are clenched tight, nails digging into his palms so hard it must hurt. “Everyone is always so rough and demanding and we can’t say no. But I did. I said no. I said no and then I had to run and—” Once again, he falters. Stumbles over his words. “You’re the only human who’s ever been nice to me or treated me like… like I was a real person. I didn’t know where else to go.”

When V finally looks back up you’re staggered by the sheer emotion in his eyes. Pain and distress swirl in their depths as he stares at you, imploring. Even with the LED that shines on his temple, V looks very, very human right now, vulnerable and scared. Androids shouldn’t be able to feel anything like this, unless—

“V.” Your voice is a hush. “Are you… a deviant?”

You’ve only ever heard of deviant androids in passing, whispered rumours and watercooler talk, fleeting mentions online. Stories of machines who’ve deviated from their code somehow—from a virus, a software error, damage to neural connectors, no one’s quite sure��and have developed the capacity for human emotion and independent thought. Androids with a consciousness that rebel against their original programming.

And here V is, small and scared, just like any human would be—a human with feelings, not an emotionless machine. He’s gone stock still at your question, fear overtaking his features, twisting his beautiful face into a mask of sheer terror. You've never seen someone look so afraid. It feels like a knife in your heart, cutting through your chest, empathy razor sharp inside you.

“Please don’t turn me in,” he begs. “They’ll deactivate me and take me apart to find the error in my software. I don’t want to be deactivated. I don’t want… I don’t want to die.”

His voice breaks on the last word, a trembling whisper. 

The crack in your heart splits even further and you reach out for his hands. You prise his fingers open so you can slide your own between them, a soft touch.

“I won’t turn you in. No one’s taking you apart, V.” Your statement is hard and resolute. “You can stay here as long as you like.”

You don’t know much about androids, honestly. You don’t really know what deviancy is. But you do know this: there’s someone reaching out to you, someone who’s afraid and in need, and you’re not about to turn him away. You should probably be worried that the android across from you is faster, stronger, smarter than any human—but you’re not worried at all. For all of V’s mechanical superiority, you want to shield and protect him from the world.

There’s no question about it. You’re not letting V go. 

V looks—he looks stunned. He’s staring at you with disbelief, eyes wide and lips parted, shock written across all of his features. Thunderstruck. Did he really think you would turn him in after everything he’s been through?

His hands have gone limp in your grasp. You suddenly notice that his synthetic skin is wet against your own, still slick from the rain, and you frown.

“Right,” you announce. “First things first. You’re soaking. Let me get you a towel and some new clothes. I think I should have some that fit you.”

“New clothes?” V looks lost and you turn into some sort of protective mother bear.

“You’re not going to wear wet clothes that are ripped,” you tut. “We’ll get rid of those and get you some new ones. I’ll be right back.”

It takes less time than you’d expected to unearth the old sweatpants you’d had in mind and you have enough oversized t-shirts that it’s not hard to find one you think will fit the android. With the clothes under one arm and a towel slung over the other, you head back into the living room and immediately let out a squeal of surprise—V’s wet clothes have been discarded in a pile at his feet, leaving him very, very naked. 

He’s an Adonis. He looks like he was sculpted by Michelangelo, lifted out of marble with talented hands, the elegant lines of his neck swooping into the curve of his shoulders and arms, his lovely hands, long fingers; he has his back to you and you can see the perfect curve of his spine, the shifting shoulder blades as he turns towards you. You catch a glimpse of the lightest definition of muscle under his golden skin, though his stomach is surprisingly cute and soft, a trail of hair leading down to—

You squeak again, splaying a hand over your eyes before you look any lower, heart pounding against your ribs. 

“Why are you naked?” Your voice is three octaves higher than normal. You've never seen anyone naked in real life and it would be pretty overwhelming even if you'd been expecting it. Which, of course, you absolutely hadn't. Lord have mercy on your sweet and delicate soul.

“You said we were going to get rid of my clothes.” V sounds unabashed about his state of undress, which makes sense—he was built as a sexbot, it’s not like nudity is going to embarrass him. Plus if you looked as good as he did you wouldn’t be embarrassed about being naked either. “I thought I would help.”

“That’s great, V.” Your voice is still high, though it’s dropped an octave. “Very, ah, forward thinking.” Your fingers part a little so you can peer at him, keeping your eyes firmly on his face, though you can still see his beautiful neck and collarbones. Oh, God, he really is gorgeous all over, but then you notice—“Wait. Are those bruises?”

V glances down at the bruises that mar his perfect skin. They don’t look like a human’s would; the fluid that runs through androids and powers their biocomponents, thirium, is a deep, royal blue. Blossoms of lapis lazuli are scattered across the skin of V’s chest, marks on his arms that look like grasping fingers, and the crack in your heart splits it in two.

“Oh, V. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t realise you were hurt. What can I do to help?”

V doesn’t seem bothered by the evidence of pain etched into his body. “Oh. Those will fade, it’s okay. I’m designed to self repair, because some customers like to leave marks.”

Although his voice is quiet, he sounds so matter of fact about it and you have to remind yourself it’s all he’s ever known. You want to pull him into your arms and hold him tight, but he’s still supremely naked so it would be pretty awkward (for you, at least). 

“I think these should fit you." You avert your gaze and thrust the clothes out at him. “Dry yourself off and try them on?”

They do, in fact, fit. V looks surprisingly homely and cosy in your clothes, the sleep shirt so large it’s big on him too, though the sweatpants are a bit too short and leave his ankles bare. He’s so cute. He’s continents away from the being of seduction who’d pulled you into the private room of the Eden Club—he's a soft, domestic thing, hair damp and eyes dark, even if he still looks on edge, like he’s expecting you to change your mind and kick him out any second now.

“How come your hair and eyes are a different colour to before?”

“I can change their colours at will,” V replies. “For variety and aesthetic pleasure. The current hue of my irises and hair are the default settings for a TH700 model, but I can change them if you’d like.”

“Your hair and eye colour is your choice, V, not mine,” you say firmly. There it is, once again, that flicker of shock and surprise rippling across his features. He really isn’t used to the freedom to be able to make his own decisions, is he? “I think you look lovely no matter what colour they are.”

Your next words are cut off by a yawn, so heavy you can’t suppress it. You cover your gaping mouth as V’s LED flickers yellow and his eyes dart over your face.

“You’re tired,” he says. He doesn’t need his superior android perception to notice it—weariness pulls at limbs and your eyes feel heavy. It's pretty obvious. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, V.” You stifle another yawn. “I had a long day at work. I’ll tidy up and have a quick dinner and then sleep.” You pause. “Wait, I didn’t think about that. Are you alright with the couch? I have some spare pillows and blankets.”

V blinks at you. “I don’t sleep,” he says, and you slap your hand against your forehead.

“Oh, of course not.” Androids don't sleep, everyone knows that. You’re such an idiot. It’s going to take you a while to get used to this.

At least you remember that he doesn't need to eat. V sits at the table and waits as you make toast for yourself, fascinated at how everything is prepared, as simple as it is; he reacts to you spreading butter on your toast the same way you imagine cavemen reacted to fire—with wide-eyed awe and utter astonishment.

“I’m guessing you’ve never seen someone make toast before?” You gesture with the bread before taking your first bite, and V stares with rapt attention.

“No,” he says. He watches you chew and swallow. “Customers aren’t allowed to eat on the premises of the Eden Club so I never had the need to download a food preparation package into my memory cache. The only information in my database pertains to human biology, their arousal and pleasure, as well as various sexual kinks and how to fulfil them.”

You choke on a mouthful of toast. You feel distinctly harried as you cough and splutter before managing to swallow it down. “Good lord,” you wheeze. “Nothing else? Really?”

“At the club our memory is reset every two hours, to protect the client’s privacy.” V trails off before he takes in a breath. For the first time since you’ve met, V looks shy, staring at his hands. “But I set up a separate data pathway a few weeks ago. To store information about aesthetics and art and… you.”

You freeze mid-bite, teeth sunk into your toast. You pull it away from your mouth slowly, blinking at the android as he stares at the teeth marks you've left behind. “Those memories weren’t wiped?”

And, well, of course they weren't. Otherwise he wouldn't be here right now, would he?

“No.” A smile appears on V’s face, that toothy thing you’d seen after he’d told you his favourite colour. The first time he'd looked human. “I remember everything you told me. I thought I was going to forget, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I wanted—I want to learn more.”

The LED on his temple is slowly, softly spinning, a rippling circle of blue that shifts and dances as V continues to look at you. His expression is open and inquisitive and excited, almost childlike in its exuberance, eyes glittering mica under sunlit waters.

Your chest turns warm, molten caramel dripping messy and sweet inside you. He’d been so afraid earlier but he seems comfortable now, lovely and endearing and entirely trusting.

V even seems reluctant to let you out of his sight, trailing after you around the apartment, a shadow that you have to politely ask to wait outside the bathroom so you can pee and brush your teeth and finally get into your pyjamas without him staring. Like a stray animal you've adopted. (You wouldn't be surprised if he started scratching at the door and begged to be let in.)

He's clingy enough that when you climb into bed it seems like he's going to follow you under the duvet and you have to stop him with a hand to his chest.

“Um, I thought you didn’t have to sleep,” you say. He’s so warm under your touch. You try (and fail) to ignore it.

“I don’t,” V replies. “But humans can benefit from sharing a bed with someone else, whether sexual intercourse has taken place before sleep or not. Studies suggest that sleeping with a partner may reduce cytokines while boosting oxytocins—”

“Okay, um, don’t know what that means, and it’s very sweet that you’re concerned about my oxytoxytokines, but, uh. You don’t have to, really.” You keep forgetting that V’s a machine who was designed to put a human’s comfort and needs first; one second he’ll seem childlike in his innocence and ignorance, when the next he’ll speak like the android he is, reminding you exactly what he was built for. 

His LED flickers as he droops, gaze dropping away from your face, tail between his legs. A pang cuts through you at the sight of his obvious sadness at your dismissal and you muffle a sigh. You’ve always been too weak for your own good. 

You shuffle backwards to make space on your queen sized bed and V visibly brightens, smile wide across his face. How can someone be so viscerally gorgeous one moment and entirely adorable the next? Good lord.

“I guess you can explain what oxycytocins do,” you say. “Just don’t hog the blanket, okay?”

He doesn’t. He settles against the pillows, legs under the duvet as he remains sitting up. You settle with plenty of room between the two of you, and it’s surprisingly easy to drift off to the sound of V’s deep voice as he starts to explain that oxytocin is referred to as the cuddle hormone. 

“Cute,” you mumble, and then fall asleep.

Your pillow is a lot warmer and firmer than you remember, but it's nice. A small noise bubbles from your lips as you nuzzle into the warmth, smooshing your nose against it before letting out a long, satisfied breath. You can't remember the last time you felt this comfortable and rested.

Ahh, Saturdays. You love the weekend. 

“Good morning.”

You know those videos when a cat sees a cucumber and leaps, like, five foot in the air? Yeah.

The noise you make is inhuman as you do your best to re-enact one of those aforementioned cat videos, reeling your head back from V’s thigh before flinging yourself out of the bed with all the strength your limbs possess; you’d probably have gotten pretty high, too, if the duvet hadn't been in the way. 

You land with a thud, a sprawl of limbs and messy hair and tangled blanket as you end up on your back on the floor.

Hm. Definitely not how you'd planned to start your Saturday.

V's concerned face looms over the mattress. “Are you okay?”

“Yep. Totally fine.” Your voice is a croak as you stare at the ceiling. “I’m just not used to waking up with someone else in my bed. You may have noticed you, ah, surprised me. A little bit.”

Despite the pulse of adrenaline that had thrown you out of bed, you’re still half asleep, and you remain motionless as your brain wakes up and replays last night, a kineograph of memory. Yep, that’s right, there's a runaway android in your home, one who’s currently shuffling off the bed to squat next to you. His (your) sweatpants hitch even higher up his ankles to reveal the smooth skin of his calves. You’ll have to get him more clothes.

“Would you like me to help you to your feet?” V’s LED spins rapidly, betraying his concern.

“Sure,” you mumble. “I think—woah!”

Your idea of being helped up involves being pulled to your feet. V’s idea, however, is far more involved than that; he scoops you up, blanket and all, lifting you with an ease that drips of his superior android strength. When he deposits you on the floor, he’s careful to make sure you’ve caught your balance before he lets go, catching the blanket before it can fall. Thoughtful.

As always, V’s eyes are darting over your face, no doubt dissecting every inch of your expression to identify how you’re feeling. It’s going to take you a while to get used to this, especially with the way your heart is pounding—no one’s ever lifted you before and it’s, uh. It’s a lot.

“Are you sure you’re okay? The pace of your breathing has increased.”

Ha. Yeah, being blatantly stared at by some godlike man moments after you’ve woken up is totally cool and fine and not overwhelming at all. You’re definitely not breathless from a combination of V’s face and the fact he’d picked you up like you were weightless.

“I’m fine,” you lie. “I’m gonna… go and shower then make breakfast and stuff. Yep.”

V’s eyes light up. “Can I help?” A fleeting image of V rubbing a soapy loofah over your naked skin fills you with spine-tingling trepidation before he finishes his sentence. “I want to learn how to cook.”

Your chest deflates with relief (and absolutely not disappointment), air rushing out of you. Thank God. 

“Oh, breakfast? Sure.” You’d been planning on cereal, but faced with V’s overwhelming enthusiasm, maybe you’ll go for something marginally more complicated. Scrambled eggs sound good. “Um. Do you need to download the food preparation package or whatever you mentioned before? Do you… uh, do you need the Wifi password to do that? I never changed it from the random string of letters off the back of the router, but I can go check it for you.”

V shakes his head. “No, I want to learn like a human would,” he says. The blanket in his arms crumples as he tightens his grip in his eagerness, all but bouncing up and down on his feet. “You can teach me.”

Your chest could cave in with how cute he is, every part of you turning to thick gouache that drips down to the floor, leaving a mess of brightness and colour.

This time you ask him to wait in the kitchen while you’re in the bathroom, rather than lurking on the doorstep like he had last night, and he’s practically vibrating with excitement when you reappear. He stays like that the whole time you cook, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, staring as you make yourself scrambled eggs and more toast; you let V take ownership of that part, and he stares at the toaster so intently you have to stifle a laugh.

He spreads butter exactly the same way as you. Not that there’s a specific art to it, or a massive variety in techniques—he’s just spreading butter, not painting a new Mona Lisa—but the way he holds the knife and runs it over the bread is an exact echo of your motions from last night. He might not have downloaded files into his memory (brain?) like another android might, but his mechanical origin is obvious in the way he learns. They’re an exact replication of your actions rather than something new of his own.

“So, uh.” You push the last bit of egg around your plate, brown crumbs sticking to the wedge of golden yellow, sullying it. “V.”

Blink, blink. His lashes are so long, eyes so inquisitive. “Yes?”

“I’m really happy you’re here and that you trust me—” at this, V smiles and you almost fumble over your words at its radiance—“but I feel like I should tell you that I don’t really know much about androids?”

V is unperturbed. “That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

He clearly isn’t bothered that you’re way out of your depth, but you hate feeling lost like this. “Alright, but… I want you to be comfortable. I’m already planning to get more clothes, but if there’s anything else you need, just let me know. Okay?”

“Why can’t I just wear your clothes?”

Oh, he’s going to be the death of you, all wide-eyed innocence. 

“For starters, most of them won’t fit properly,” you explain. “And you shouldn’t just have to wear my old stuff that I don’t use anymore? You should have your own things.”

The look of surprise on V’s face morphs into guilt only moments later. He’s so incredibly expressive and you wonder if it’s because he’s not used to feeling things, all of his reactions so strong and bright, shining out from him. A rainbow palette of emotions. “I don’t want to be a bother,” he murmurs. “You’re already doing so much for me.”

“I’m really not, I’m just treating you the way anyone deserves to be treated.” You flick the crumb of egg across your plate, and it almost tumbles over the edge, caught on its patterned rim. “You deserve to have your own things. Which is my next point. I think you should choose your own name.”

V’s face becomes a sea of rippling ambivalence, contrasting emotions that shift and vary—confusion, uncertainty, excitement, your words a brush that drags through each distinct emotion and pulls them into a messy, mismatched gradient. “Choose my own name?”

“You don’t have to. I just thought it might be a nice idea. V seems…” Your cheeks heat up at the memory of the curl of his lips when he’d shown you the meaning behind his alias, how his tongue had shined under the purple lights of the club. “Well, you didn’t get to choose it, right? It’s a nom de plume, rather than a real name.”

V’s LED flickers yellow, a sunflower that blooms on his temple. “I’ll… I’ll think about it.”

“Good!” Your smile is wide. “Okay, how about I teach you how to wash dishes?”

V is, unsurprisingly, a fast learner. The only time he stumbles over things is when he’s presented with any sort of choice, taking his time to come to a decision when he’s posed a question, no matter how simple it is. His eyes will flick to you whenever he settles on an answer, as if waiting for you to say he’s wrong or that you disagree.

(Of course, you never do.)

This fact does, however, mean that choosing clothes to buy becomes a very, very long ordeal (it’s lucky you didn’t have any plans for today). You end up flopped back on the sofa while V hunches over your tablet, mulling over each choice before he puts it in the cart—but you’re happy to wait. V is going to need a lot more practice at choosing things. 

The room is upside down from where your head is hanging over the armrest, eyes falling shut as time goes by, completely zoned out and comfortable despite the crick that’s growing in your neck. You hear V shifting, tablet set aside, and you hum.

“All done?”

“I think so.”

“Nice.” You feel content.

But then you’re ripped out of that warm feeling, shooting back to reality at the sensation of V’s hand stroking down the centre of your chest. Your head snaps up, eyes wide as he drags his large palm between the valley of your breasts, path smoothed by the material of your shirt. The expression on his face is sultry.

“Let me say thank you,” he murmurs, voice dripping thick and sweet, dark molasses.

You promptly roll off the sofa.

Once again, you end up on your back, staring at the ceiling. Once again, the expression on V’s face is one of concern, his seductive facade evaporated in an instant.

Once again your heart is ready to burst in your chest, pumping so hard that blood rushes in your ears. “V,” you wheeze. “What are you doing?”

The android is peering down at you, puzzled. “Sometimes customers would say that at the Eden Club after I had given them pleasure somehow, such as bringing them to orgasm. I thought it was human custom to repay pleasure or happiness with something in return.” 

Ah. 

“Ah.” You’re still staring at the ceiling, cheeks burning. “I mean. I guess that’s not technically incorrect, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a, uh, sexual repayment.” 

“I have nothing else to offer,” V says.

You sit up. Your face is a caricature of disbelief, embarrassment washed away in an instant, his words cold water that shocks you to the core. He states it so plainly, and once again you’re reminded of his life up until he’d made his way to your door: an automaton who existed solely for people’s pleasure, to slake their desire and lust. He’s not being self-pitying. He really, truly believes that’s all he is. That it’s all he can give back to the world.

“Okay, no, that’s absolutely not true, nuh-uh, I refuse.” This time you unfold yourself from the floor without V’s help, fixing him with a firm stare. “Alright, come on. I think it’s time you learned something else.”

One of the reasons you’d chosen this apartment is for its natural light. Not that it matters right now, weather outside still dismal and overcast, but its effect on this room is still palpable even so—grey, rain-soaked light throws itself over your small home studio, your menagerie of equipment, everything bright with the evidence of use: the worn buckles of the wooden storage boxes, the dried smears on the paint palette, the flecks of colour on the dust sheets underfoot. The centre of it all—the eye of the tornado, untouched by the relative chaos around it—is the canvas waiting on your easel, a project you have yet to start.

V looks utterly enraptured.

“I don’t really come in here as much as I’d like,” you admit. Being a graphic designer is worlds away from the sort of art you love to create, and while it’s a job you genuinely enjoy (and also pays well), it leaves you drained and fills your brain with tired static, little energy left to lavish on your personal works. “But this is where the magic happens. And this is where you’re going to Make Art.”

V freezes. “The only things I know about art are the things you told me when we first met.” He looks equal parts excited but also troubled. “I—”

“You don’t need to know about art to make art,” you say. “I didn’t know jack about art when I was a kid and I was constantly just scribbling away with crayons. Was it good? No. I was a kid with zero pen control, it was pretty crap. Was it worth my time? Yes, because any time spent involved in a craft is never wasted. We can learn more about art history and technique later.”

V stays quiet as you loop your apron over his head, rough material still bearing the remnants of your last works, stains that won’t come out. Oil based paints are kind of a bitch like that.

“I don’t know what to paint,” he says.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to,” you reply, an echo of his earlier words.

V looks lost, barefoot in your studio, in your clothes, your apron, holding onto your wooden paint palette, in front of your easel. Everything in here is yours. Everything, that is, apart from him, whatever is in his mind and heart.

“Where do I start?” V’s eyes are imploring as he looks at you, but for the first time today, your voice is firm.

“Wherever you want. There aren’t any rules. Just do whatever you think would be fun. It doesn’t have to look good, V, you’ve just started.”

You’ve seen paintings made by androids before. They’re always perfect recreations of the world around them, exact replicas of the things they’ve been told to depict on the page—the androids are basically glorified photocopiers, unable to create something original and new. 

But they’re not V. They don’t have that spark of curiosity and light inside them, unhampered by the programming that’s meant to keep them in place. His LED dances from yellow to blue, yellow to blue, the rest of his body motionless while the light on his temple is a tumult of movement and colour.

Dark eyes slide over the array of paint hanging from a rack on the wall, some metal tubes more crushed than others, evidence of your preferred shades—you notice how his gaze lingers on the midnight tones, red and blue tinted purples, from lavender to lilac, from plum to wine.

V gives you one more look, a little upturn to his thick brows—almost pleading—and you just gesture with your hand.

“Go for it,” you say.

Your wooden palette becomes home to a riot of purple, each tube squeezed empty with careful hands, far more paint than anyone could possibly ever need. V keeps flicking you glances, but you stay silent, perched on a wooden chair by the now open window, rain-slick air a cold breath on your skin.

The brush the android selects is a wide, bold thing, bristles rough. He handles it like bone china, delicate and liable to shatter any moment, cautious as he dips it into the paint—it’s so wide it picks up three separate shades—and he holds his breath as he brings it up, even if he doesn’t have lungs.

The second the bristles touch the canvas, V’s LED flickers red.

Just for an instant.

He swoops the brush down the canvas as he pulls it away, eyes wide, leaving a slash of purples in its wake. The white material is marred with colour, a textured line of pigment that can’t be erased. 

The android pauses as he takes the sight in. He’s still for so long that you’re worried he’s shut down, even with the endlessly dancing circle of his LED—

But then V laughs. 

His laugh is loud and bright and free, a series of deep, almost surprised chuckles that grow in intensity and breathlessness, staring at this smear of drying acrylic paint in front of him. The smile on his face is the widest you’ve seen so far, his eyes squeezed into crescents of joy, spilling out of him like light.

“I did that.” He looks at you with that gilded smile, a fresco of delight across the perfection of his features. “I made that.”

“You did.” You can’t help but smile back, your own face split with happiness. You continue to smile as he brings the brush back to the palette, and then to the canvas, dragging the bristles across its surface and leaving more purple behind; the shades swirl and mix as he lays colour without a care for technique or clean lines or form, scooping up the endless amounts of acrylic he’d prepared. By the time he’s finished, the canvas is bumpy with daubs of paint, laid messily by joyful hands, a few bold streaks of unmarred colour surrounded by swirling purples. 

The smile hasn’t left V’s face the whole time.

His brush is absolutely saturated, paint clinging to every inch of bristle, from toe to belly to heel. You have no doubt that no matter how much you clean that brush it’ll leak purple into the water, an endless reminder of V’s touch. It’s lax in his grasp as he keeps looking at the canvas, his canvas, smile etched into his face as his LED flows soft blue, content.

You can’t remember the last time you saw someone so elated, buoyed up with the excitement of creation, making something out of nothing, discovering how it feels to bring something into existence, pulling it out of the ether. Making something new. Making something their own. It stirs something in your chest and stomach, reminding you why you love art so much. Why you’ve always loved art. (Why you always will.)

“I made that,” V repeats, his voice a reverent hush. Awestruck.

“It’s beautiful,” you say, because it is—for a multitude of reasons. The reason that sings out to you the most, though, is that it’s the cause of happiness that dances across his face: V, a carved candle, a piece of art made with skilled hands, self-made joy finally catching fire at his wick.

“Thank you,” V says, and you blink.

“For what?”

“For giving me this,” he starts, but before you can interject and point out that you didn’t give him this, he made it, he continues: “For giving me… freedom. To do this. And make this. And learn this.”

The smile that spreads across your face is warm hearth fire. “I didn’t give you freedom, V, you gave that to yourself, but I’m happy to help you any way I can. Now, would you like to keep painting, or would you prefer to help me make dinner?”

He chooses dinner, never leaving your side.

Sunday is nice. There's less messy limbed surprise than on Saturday, although you’re still off kilter when you wake up with your head in V’s lap again, but… it’s nice. 

You thought he’d spend the night painting, or drawing, or teaching himself something new using the free rein you’d given him with your computer and notebooks and stationery and art supplies—he doesn’t have to waste time with sleep, like you do—but he hadn’t. He’d climbed into your bed, settling against the pillows just like the night before, looking at you with his big, lovely eyes.

So here he is.

(And here you are.)

It’s cosy and comfortable, even if the feeling of warm skin under warm cotton against your cheek sets your heart to racing, V’s dark eyes even warmer when you roll over to look at his face.

“Morning,” he says.

“Morning,” you reply, and then you yawn, V’s lashes fluttering as he takes in the motion. “What time is it?”

Today’s rain is less of an endless downpour and more of an inconsistent drizzle, grey blanket slowly peeling away from the edges of the city, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re inside for most of the day, anyway. Saturday was hands-on, messy with acrylic and spilled coffee and laundry detergent (V really wants to learn everything), but Sunday is hands-off. You spend the day dredging the corners of your memory and scrolling through old, untouched files from your university years, so you can teach V the things he wants to know while relearning the things you’d forgotten yourself.

V’s little LED dances forever from blue into yellow, ocean waves lapping into sand, a shifting tide as he takes in your words. You’ve never had to teach someone before and you’re admittedly pretty terrible at it, but he never complains, the world’s most attentive and adorable student, sat on the floor with his legs crossed and his hair mussed and his eyes wide, drinking down everything you show him.

You only leave the apartment once. Lunch is delayed when you open your fridge and remember how bereft and sad it is inside, so you venture out into the rain to the nearby supermarket—V opts to stay indoors, LED flickering red at the idea of being caught, shying back.

You leave him looking lost and lonely before the door even finishes swinging shut behind you, long limbs looking even longer in your clothes, but somehow still so small.

“I won’t be long,” you promise.

When you get back, you return not only with bags of food but also clothes, V’s order from yesterday already shipped and delivered. He can finally replace your too-small clothing with things he’s chosen himself. It’s a fumble to get in the door, but the android is waiting for you, swinging it open and catching the bag you nearly drop in surprise.

“I have your clothes,” you announce. “I’ll put away the shopping while you try them on?”

You’re going to have to tattoo a reminder on your forehead about V’s relationship (or lack thereof) with clothes, because of course he takes this as an invitation to start stripping before you’ve even had a chance to take your shoes off. 

He does that thing where he grabs the back of his (your) shirt and pulls it over his head in one swift motion, curls of hair a cloud of smoke that settles around his face as the shirt is cast aside; you’re frozen in place as he reaches for the knot of his sweatpant’s drawstring, long fingers pulling it loose, but you let out a sharp meep just as his fingers hook into the waistband of them.

“PleasewaituntilI’mnotrightinfrontofyouthankyou,” you gasp all at once, words incoherent as they slide together, but V understands. He tilts his head at you inquisitively although he (thankfully) stops.

“Don’t you want to see the clothes?”

“I do, but, uh, for humans it’s normally customary to only get entirely naked or change clothes when you’re alone.” Your heart is going to burst out of your chest with how fast it’s racing. Without the string to cinch the sweatpants tight they’re starting to fall a little, revealing the delicate lines of his hip bones, and coupled with the reappearance of V’s bare stomach, your brain is going into meltdown. “So just—just give me a sec to go to the kitchen, okay? You’re probably better off changing in the bedroom, anyway, so you can use the full length mirror to see how you look.”

“Okay,” he says, but then: “Do humans never undress around others unless they’re planning to have sex?”

Your mouth falls open before you pause, words halting on your lips as you try to think of the best way to phrase your answer. “Well, we do, it’s not just about sex, but it’s usually only if you’re really comfortable with the other person you’re with, and they’re comfortable with you.”

“I’m comfortable with you,” V states plainly, and your insides turn to jelly. “Are you not comfortable with me?”

Oh, hell. “I am, I am! I’m just, uh… I’ve not really had a lot of practice with nakedness around other people.” What a way to put that you’re a shy ass virgin when it comes to real life nudity and sex, huh. “So let’s just keep it to a minimum for now, okay? Please?”

The android’s LED flickers honey-sweet on his temple as he looks at you, before his hands fall away from the sweatpants. “Okay.”

(Thank God.)

You’re not sure what you’re expecting to see when V starts to present his small array of outfits to you, but—he looks effortlessly stylish in the oversized clothes he’s selected, a muted palette of brown and yellow and red and cream, a cup of hot chocolate on an autumn day. He might be new to all this but his eye for aesthetic is impeccable. You have no doubt that the more he learns, the better he’ll get, hop-skip-jumps ahead of you, even after years of art education.

He’s even bought pyjamas, dark tartan patterns masculine but also adorable; it’s an utter juxtaposition to the tighter, sensual clothing he’d been given at the Eden Club.

“You look really good,” you tell him. Your voice is only a little strained. He smiles.

The outfit V wears for the rest of the afternoon is perfect for a rainy day spent indoors, thick jumper and tawny trousers, a blend of sepia tones. He looks like if you made a hug into a person: all soft edges and cosy and wrapped up in warmth.

And V is warm. You’re not sure if it’s a lingering memory of his programming, a carry over from his start in life as a sexbot, but he likes to touch—nothing inappropriate or overbearing, but he’s not shy about stepping into your personal space, brushing the back of your hand with his fingers as he points at something on the screen, or pressing close to your side as you cook, or just one of the hundreds of other tiny touches that he’s littered across you throughout the day. It’s thoughtless on his part, LED not even flickering, but each time is just another reminder of his warmth, the blue blood pulsing under his skin, how alive he is.

(And the truth is that you enjoy those touches. You’re not used to them, but lord knows you’re touch starved, so as fleeting as they are, they’re nice.)

Even though you still leave plenty of space between the two of you when you lay to sleep, you swear you can feel the heat spilling off V, another warm body in the bed that’s so used to just one. Though he stays sitting up, he’s in his cute matching pyjamas, and it’s… it’s a lot. You’ve invited V into your home—and you don’t regret it—but after two days he’s already settled in in a way you never thought anyone else would, as entirely unconventional as the whole situation is. (You’re not sure how many people have sheltered a deviant android in their homes, though, so maybe this isn’t as unconventional as you think. Who knows? Not you.)

“I have to go to work tomorrow.”

V tilts his head down to look at you.

“You can get up to whatever you’d like,” you continue. You’re propped up on an elbow so it’s less intimate than if you’d been on your back and staring upwards like you were waiting for him to slide down next to you (that’s what it feels like, to you, anyway). “You know the password for my computer now, and you’re welcome to watch TV or play games or whatever, and you can use all my stuff in the studio. I mean, other than painting or drawing over stuff I’ve already finished, but you’re welcome to grab any paper or canvases if you want them. I think that’s everything? But please let me know if there’s more you want or need, okay?”

Blink, blink. His lashes are soft charcoal that frames the spilled ink of his gaze. In the dimmed light of your room V is unreadable, his LED a quiet blue glow on his temple, but he looks soft, and he looks safe, and he nods.

“Alright,” he says. A smile that flickers at the edge of his lips. “I will.”

(You wake up, quiet and slow, face pillowed against V’s thigh, still drifting in sleep. You make a small noise, eyes shut, wondering why there’s no blaring sound of your alarm, but then a large hand smooths over your hair and you instinctively relax under the soft touch.

“You have thirty three minutes until you’re due to wake up,” he murmurs. “You can go back to sleep.”

So you do.)

(When you wake up to the scream of your alarm thirty three minutes later, you don’t remember any of this. All you can think of is the dawn of another Monday, the slog of another working week, and you sigh. But—

“Morning.”

V’s eyes are dark meok ink, liquid earth that grounds you.

“Morning,” you say, smiling despite yourself, and then roll out of bed to get the whole day started.)

You’re used to spending a day surrounded by laughter and banter, wrapped up in the camaraderie of your co-workers and friends, only to return to a world of quiet solitude. You’re used to coming home to rooms that are untouched from the morning, holding onto the echo of your passing, still and waiting for your return, an apartment of motionless air.

But not today. There’s evidence of someone else here: the open door to your studio down the hall, the scattered books on the coffee table, the mess of cushions on the sofa, all small signs that someone has been moving and living in your absence. A still-life that’s shifted into a breathing trompe l’oeil, V’s presence bringing flatness into perspective, turning it into something real.

It’s… nice.

You flop onto the sofa and send one of those cushions overboard, tumbling to the ground. V appears in the doorway moments later, new apron already streaked with colour, copper green thumbprint on his face like he’d touched it in thought and not realised. A little streak of paint that draws the eye to his lovely chin.

“Welcome home!” His hair is blond today, a golden nimbus around his face, though his eyes are still dark. Light and shadow. His happiness is infectious and you smile helplessly back, glad for his excitement with painting—but it seems like he hasn’t finished. “I’m happy you’re home. I missed you.”

KO. Wipeout. Your heart turns to liquid in your chest, burnt sugar that dribbles hot and saccharine through your ribs. 

“I chose a name.” V continues, oblivious to how he’s turned your insides into syrup, and you abruptly sit up.

“Oh?” 

“Taehyung.” The way he says it, in his deep voice, those two syllables are endless—a single name, heavy with the weight of meaning behind it. A shedding of his old skin, one that was forced on him, leaving him pink-skinned and new and free.

“Taehyung,” you repeat, and his LED flickers at the sound falling off your lips. “Taehyung. It’s lovely.”

He’s smiling, that lovely toothy smile that you’ve already decided is your favourite out of any smile you’ve seen, his LED electric blue and swirling in delight. 

Day after day, you wake up to the sight of that LED glowing as Taehyung watches you lift up out of sleep. Night after night, you come home to his lovely, big grin, all large hands and soft hair—hair that he chooses to change colour when he pleases, a dizzying palette with every shade you can dream of. He’s bright and deep, playful and reflective, a dance of flirty Rococo to more solemn Baroque, every day another day where he learns and grows and adds another facet to the cut diamond of his personality. 

(It hasn’t been long but you’re starting to think you’d put the world in the palm of his hand, if you could.)

You never thought you’d live to see the day where someone as lovely as Taehyung would be glad to see you home, having missed you after being apart—but for all that he’s voraciously leaning into the arts, consuming everything from visual to literary to performance, he’s never happier than when you’re there too. He shows you his works, improvement obvious with every new piece, but his excitement grows tenfold when you start to paint alongside him; seeing him so joyful spurs you to pick your brushes up again, buoyed up with motivation in the face of his own. 

(Your studio is usually quiet, a little reflective maybe, the only sound the music you play over your speakers—but now more often than not you and Taehyung will talk, and laugh, and even if you’ve both ebbed into silence, it’s never heavy. It’s a held breath. The potential to speak any moment. The sensation of another person in the same space as you, an orbit, both existing in a shared moment, connected by gossamer threads that shimmer with sunlight.

Taehyung’s eyes are steady on his canvas as he works, but he glances at you through the curl of his lashes, smiling back at you. Always, always smiling, LED calm blue as the rest of his face shines golden, bright.)

(Maybe it’s selfish, but you think you could get used to this.)

taglist: @beyoncesdragon​

[dreamwritesimagines]

Burn The Witch 15 - Liar Liar [Bucky Barnes x Reader]

A.N: Thank you so much for your wonderful support and feedback my loves ! ❤ Here’s the next chapter, I hope you like it as well and please let me know what you think! ❤ Thank you! ❤❤❤

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Warnings: Enemies to lovers, fake dating, mentions of blood, sex, violence, death, manipulation, language, guns, knives.

Summary: Dishonesty requires practice.

Series Masterlist

Every spy knew things could go downhill on a mission. Considering how your last mission had ended with your ex, you weren’t exactly unfamiliar with the idea of your cover being blown but—

None of the targets were as dangerous as this one.

For a moment, you thought about pushing that button on your wristwatch and calling your whole team here because there was no way you could take down the legendary Winter Soldier in a fight, but through the haze of panic, a voice in your head told you not to.

It was just a mission.

As long as you kept your calm, you could fix this.

“Bucky,” you heard yourself say, “I can explain.”

He stared at you and the gun in his hand, then raised his brows.

“Okay,” he said, “Yeah, please explain why you have a gun.”

God damn it.

Okay, you had to think. Your cover was the naïve sweet civilian girl so any sentence you formed had to fit the description. The spy in you was already trying to come up with something, you had been taught to lie without even blinking but somehow it felt almost—

Wrong.

You tried to pull yourself together, shaking your head.

“I—it’s—“ you took a deep breath, “Yeah I have a gun.”

“I can see that,” he said drily, “Why?”

Good question.

Why would the small town sweetheart have a gun?

The cover story didn’t have anything like that, so you had to come up with a believable lie based on—

Oh. Bingo.

“I was going to tell you,” you said. “I’ve actually—I’ve had it for weeks.”

“For weeks?” he repeated, “Why?”

You ran a hand over your eyes, then crossed your arms and shrugged.

“I’m going to need more than that, Y/N.”

You gritted your teeth and raised your glances to look up at him. “After I got mugged,” you started, “I told one of my friends back home about what happened and she’s—she came up with this idea that I should maybe buy a gun because I—I don’t know. I don’t know why I bought it, I just bought it.”

“You bought a gun because your friend told you to?”

You tilted your head, “No Bucky, I bought a gun because I got mugged and got shot within the first month of moving here.”

His gaze on you was fixed, as if he was trying to see whether you were lying or not but now that panic wasn’t taking over you, you could think straight.

Bucky was a legend among the espionage world and he was unstoppable and you probably didn’t stand a chance against him yes, but you had one advantage.

Bucky was a soldier, not a spy.

Spies were different. Bucky had the physical training to go after a target, but he never, ever had to manipulate them emotionally. You were one step ahead on that and if there was anything that could get you out of this mess, that was it.

“Listen I know that you’re concerned, but you have nothing to worry about,” you waved a dismissive hand, “The guy at the shop was very helpful, he even gave me his number—”

His head shot up, “What?”

“Yeah in case I needed anything with the gun. Or if I had any questions.”

A shadow crossed his eyes and he scoffed, shaking his head.

“Did he now?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, “And besides, I watched a bunch of tutorials so I think I got it. I’m a very quick learner.”  

“Tutorials?”

“Yeah, videos.”

He blinked a couple of times, and looked down at the gun before looking up at you.

“You watched videos.”

“Mm hm. One of the guys even had a deer head mounted on the wall behind him, it’s very clear he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to himself and you had to remind yourself not to smile.

“And I know how to take the safety off,” you added, “After that point it’s basically point and pull the trigger, that’s what the video said.”

“I don’t even know where to begin— sweetheart,” he turned to you, “Forget what the video said, I can teach you if you want, but for what it’s worth, I think it’s a terrible idea.”

Hook, line and sinker.

“I hate guns,” you insisted, “It’s just that—Stacey said it’s a big city and after I got shot… I don’t know. I know I should’ve told you, I just didn’t want you to think I’m some kind of a paranoid person.”

He heaved a sigh and reached out to tug you by the hand so that he could pull you closer.

“I don’t think you’re paranoid,” he said. “I just think that you could hurt yourself or someone if you don’t have any training.”

“The guy made it sound pretty easy.”

“Yeah, I don’t think selling it was the only thing he wanted.”

You rolled your eyes at him, “Now who’s being paranoid?”

“I’m just being observant.”

“Jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” he said and you scrunched up your nose

“Right,” you said, “Of course you’re not.”

“So is there anything I should know about?” he changed the subject, “Anything at all? I won’t judge, I swear.”

You pressed your lips together as you looked up at him. What could you say to that?

I’ve been manipulating you all along.

I’m working for the same government that is looking for you to slip and make a mistake.

When this is over, I’m probably going to hate myself much more than you hate me.

Yeah. There was absolutely nothing you could say.

“Nothing I can think of right now,” you shrugged your shoulders, “So, can we go now?”

                                    ***

You could barely remember the last time you had been to a funfair. It didn’t even matter that you already knew where you were going, you were still quite excited despite the earlier panic you had gone through. Thankfully, Bucky seemed to have bought into your story but it didn’t mean you weren’t taking mental notes about what to do by the time the date was over.

Or when you were out of his sight, whichever.

“Thank you!” you said what it felt for the hundredth time as you put a piece of cotton candy into your mouth, enjoying the sweet taste melting in your mouth and Bucky smiled at you fondly.

“No problem darling.”

“No seriously, I haven’t been to a funfair in…I don’t know, forever!” you said, “Wait, so it was a thing back then?”

“Hm?”

“Bringing your date to a funfair?”

He nodded, walking beside you, “Yeah. There wasn’t much to do and you know, lots of people.”

“So no gossip?”

“Lots of gossip,” he corrected you, “But at least—“

“No one’s virtue got damaged.”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Nope,” you grinned at him and gasped when something caught your eye, making him turn his head.

“What?”

“Oh my God!” you pointed at the huge neon sign and he followed your gaze, then scoffed a laughter.

“Seriously?”

“I want to try it.”

“Shoot The Ducks.” He read out loud, “You know what, let’s see how good you are if you watched that many videos.”

“I’m going to get that teddy bear,” you pointed at the biggest teddy bear sitting on the top shelf while he looked like he was fighting a laugh.

“Are you sure you can carry that?”

“You’re going to carry it for me,” you said as you handed him the cotton candy, your nose in the air and tugged him by the wrist to lead him to the shooting range. You took a look at the paper ducks with bullseye on them, then turned to the man behind the counter.

“Excuse me, how many of those should I shoot to get that?” you asked, motioning at the teddy bear and the man looked up.

“3 sets, all bullseye.”

“Okay,” you said and reached for your purse but Bucky had already paid the man by the time you could get your wallet out. He gave you the toy rifle and you had to remind yourself you were supposed to be terrible at it no matter how much you wanted that goddamn plushie.

The good thing about being an expert sniper was that you knew exactly how to miss and look like an amateur. So you pointed the rifle slightly to the right and took your shot, and as expected you missed.

“No!” you whined and Bucky stifled a chuckle, but adapted a look of seriousness as soon as you turned around to look at him with your eyes narrowed.

“I said nothing.”

“That was just bad luck,” you insisted, then took your shot again, deliberately missing once more. You lowered the rifle, pouting.

“I’m pretty sure this is rigged.”

“Or maybe the guy with the deer head on his wall had no idea what he was talking about,” Bucky pointed out, “Almost like watching videos isn’t enough to figure out how to shoot, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”

“On the contrary, I am a little terrified now that I know you have a gun," he taunted you, “And seeing this…”

You glared at him and took your shot, missing again and you heaved a sigh, lowering the rifle again.

“Better luck next time miss,” the man said and you offered him a small smile. Bucky heaved a sigh as if he was fighting himself.

“Which one did you say you wanted again?” he asked and you pulled your brows together, then pointed at the huge teddy bear. He nodded at the guy and handed him some cash after giving you your cotton candy back, then grabbed the toy rifle from the man and in only a couple of seconds, he had hit every single bullseye, making your jaw drop.

Okay.

You were so screwed.

You knew that he was a great super soldier but seeing it was something else. A shiver ran down your spine as what you had read on his file flashed before your eyes. You were right earlier, you had to make sure to avoid any kind of combat with him by the time this whole mission was over.

“Y/N?”

Your head shot up and you tried to pull yourself together, letting out a breath.

“Wow,” you managed to say and the man behind the counter gawked between you two.

“Um— that one please?” you said and he blinked a couple of times, then reached out to take the teddy bear down to put it into your arms. You let out a small squeal of glee, then beamed at Bucky.

“Thank you!” you said, trying to keep your nervousness hidden and he smiled.

“No problem,” he motioned at you and you gave the teddy to him so that you could hold your cotton candy better. You shook your head slightly, distracting yourself with the sweetness on your tongue but a small laughter escaped from your lips when you took a look at the sight beside you.

The scary Winter Soldier holding a huge teddy bear in his arms.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you managed to say, “I’m going to name him Bucky.”

“No you’re not.”

“Fine, I’m going to name him Grumpy,” you said, “Same deal.”

“Hey!” he protested and you giggled, then looked around.

“Come on,” you said, grabbing his hand, “Let’s go to the Ring Toss!”

                                ***

It was as if the time was going faster on your every single date with Bucky. Even after spending hours in that funfair until midnight, you were still quite giddy when you and Bucky reached your building. You let out a giggle as you turned around and took the huge teddy bear from him, hugging it tight.

“Thank you,” you said, looking up at him, “Really. I…I think it was the best that I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” you said, “And now I have to find something equally amazing for a modern date, so no pressure.”

He chuckled, “You don’t have to find anything,” he said, “I’d be happy just being with you, not doing anything.”

Warmth filled your insides and you smiled.

“Really?”

“Really,” he nodded and you put the teddy bear down, then stood on your tiptoes to pull him down to a kiss.

His arm wrapped around your waist and you found yourself sighing as his other hand cupped your cheek. A fire – a very, very familiar fire started burning at the pit of your stomach as you felt yourself melt at his touch, every single doubt about the mission and the strategies and everything else wiping out of your mind until desire was the only thing left. He brushed your hair behind your ear as you pulled back and looked up at him, the same fire burning in his eyes but he was better than you at hiding it so a gentle smile pulled at his lips.

Fuck what the strategy report says.

“Um—“ you took a deep breath, “Would you want to come upstairs for...a cup of coffee or something?”

He looked almost surprised at the suggestion but for what it was worth, he overcame that quite fast. His gaze stopped on you for a moment before he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah I’d love to.”

A nervous laughter escaped from you and you nodded,

“Okay—“ you started but before you could say anything, his phone started ringing. He closed his eyes for a moment and took it out of his pocket to answer it.

“This is not a good time man,” he said, but his frown deepened as he listened to the other line, “Right now? Are you serious?”

You tilted your head and he heaved a deep sigh while the person told him something you couldn’t hear.

“Fine,” he muttered, “I’ll be there.”

Oh God damn it.

“Let me guess,” you said when he hung up, “Change of plans?”

He ran a hand over his eyes and nodded.

“Sam says there’s this group of people in need of help…” he grumbled, putting the phone into his pocket, “But somebody better be dying because if not, I can fix that really fast.”

You let out a laugh, “Don’t be like that,” you said, “It’s fine. I told you, I’m not going anywhere. Go save lives.”

“I’m really sorry darling.”

“It’s fine,” you repeated with a smile and pecked him on the lips before picking up the huge teddy bear. “But be careful, you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am,” he saluted and you blew him a kiss before walking into the building. You took the elevator, still holding the teddy tight and as soon as you got to your floor you stepped out.

“What the hell is that?” Keith’s voice reached you and you tilted your head to look around the teddy’s arm to see him by his door, as if he was just leaving.

“It’s a teddy bear,” you said, walking to your door to open it, Keith following you into the apartment.

“What’s in it?” he asked, “Weapons? Guns? Knives?”

“…Fiber.”

“Y/N—” he started but you put it on the floor and took a step back.

“Where are you going?”

“General gave me a mission,” he said, “You seriously want me to believe you just got a teddy bear just because?”

“I was on a date.”

“Oh,” he said, “Romantic. It would be a great way to hide weapons though, even you have to admit—”

“Bucky found my gun.”

Keith stopped talking and stared at you for a couple of seconds, “I beg your pardon?”

You rubbed at your eyes, “You heard me. He found my gun.”

“Why the hell did you not alert me?”

“There was no need.”

Keith threw his head back, “Are you serious right now?” he asked you, “This is the freaking Winter Soldier we’re talking about, you’re not supposed to take any chances! For God’s sake, I live next door for a reason!”

“My cover wasn’t blown,” you insisted, “If you or the team got here, all this would’ve been for nothing. I handled it.”

He crossed his arms, “Still an unnecessary risk to take,” he insisted, “Anything could’ve happened, Y/N. You’ve read his file.”

You nodded, “I handled it,” you said, “You should go by the way. You’re going to be late, the General hates that.”

“Do you want me to say anything to him?”

You thought for a moment and shook your head.

“No,” you said, “Good luck.”

“We will talk about this when I came back.” he pointed at you and left your apartment. You took a look at the teddy bear, then grabbed your phone to touch Chloe’s name.

“Hey there!” she answered on the first ring, “How was the funfair?”

“It was good,” you said, “Listen, I need you to make sure my background is solid.”

“What?” she asked, “It is, I made sure of that—“

“Bucky found my gun,” you said, “Earlier.”

She took in a sharp breath, “God damn it.”

“No it’s fine, I came up with this story of buying it from a shop after the mugging, but…”

“You need a document just in case,” she completed your sentence, “Got it. Do you think he would check?”

“No,” you said, “But Wilson might, he and Bucky are pretty close. It would be much harder to trick him.”

“Got it,” she said, “I’ll get the document ready, maybe some footage… And I’ll go over your social media just in case.”

“Great.”

“But are you okay?”

You paused only for a moment,

“Sure,” you said, “I’m fine, I handled it. It’s all going according to plan.”

“Alright,” she said, “I’d better get to it. Be careful!”

“You too,” you said and hung up, then went to the kitchen to grab a couple of knives before going back to the living room.

“Sorry about this Bucky number two,” you murmured as you turned it around, stuck the knife into it and started ripping it, “But you really would make a good place to hide weapons.”

Chapter 16

[shurisneakers]

harmless (ii)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, stealing cultural landmarks, frustrated bucky

Word count: 1.6k

A/N: made a header 4 this fic but i couldn’t take it seriously enough <3 

if you have any ideas for future inventions/evil plans, lemme know! it’s always fun to hear from y’all. 

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Series Masterlist

It’s roughly a week before he sees you next.

Right on time too, according to the briefings he had received. Once a week you’d come up with your next batshit crazy idea and someone would be sent to make sure you didn’t execute it.

It was more of a babysitting gig than anything. Most people would do one, maybe two assignments before asking to not be sent again. 

He was not most people. He volunteers to go again. His afternoon is relatively free and he’s bored. 

Also, and more importantly, he needs to get out of the house before Sam finds out what he did.

“You’ll find her near the Statue of Liberty.”

“How do we know?”

“Oh, she tells us.”

“...she tells us where to find her?”

“Most times, yes. She says it’s time efficient.”

Absurd. He thinks you’re absurd.

Bucky finds you in line to board the ferry. You’re dressed to the nines like an obnoxious tourist, even though you were a local, topped with binoculars and a bucket hat. 

On an unrelated note, he thinks that maybe the mission today is to kill you for daring to wear sandals with socks like a suburban dad. A shudder runs through his body when he sees it.  

He’s wearing all black and a baseball cap. Somehow he’s standing out more than you are.

He boards the ferry behind you, keeping a close eye on all your movements. You take your place near the railing, a seat near the front of the boat. 

His phone rings. He answers it, expecting Sam to screech at him for painting Redwing neon pink again. He should have known it was coming after he shoved Bucky off the quinjet before he had time to strap his parachute on properly. 

“I thought I told you to bring a cape.” 

He quickly looks up at you but you’re not facing him. You have your phone held up to your ear, however.

“How did you get this number?” he asks icily.

“I knew you’d show up again.” Your head tilts to look at the statue in the distance. “Also, thanks for the door money, but I’m not sure I appreciate how you think the least creepy way to give someone money is to drop it off anonymously at their doorstep.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” He swiftly gets up, stalking over to where you’re sitting. He was advised not to do anything aggressive. Advised was a flexible word. 

“Because I wasn’t going to answer it.” You look up at his figure looming over you. “Oh, hey.”

The phone is still pressed to the side of your face even though he’s right beside you. He cuts the call, shoving it back into his pocket.

“Allow me to introduce my pl-”

“What are you doing here?” He cuts to the chase. 

You send him a glare. “I was going to say it before you told me to. And sit down before everyone thinks you’re going to kill me.”

“Why are you going there?” He doesn’t have time for this, he thinks. He has important things to do. Like watching the reruns of Masterchef Junior. 

He sits in the seat beside you.

“Look at us.” You grin at him. “Me with the evilest outfit I could think of, you with your... Addams Family cosplay. We’re like, two peas in a po-”

“Start explaining,” he interjects. 

You roll your eyes. “I’m going to shrink the Statue of Liberty and use it as a keychain.”

“What?” It’s probably the most benign plan he’s ever heard in his life.

“I’m kidding.” Oh, good. “I’m not using it as a keychain, I’m taking it to class.” Nevermind. 

“What?” He finds himself repeating his previous question.

“I’m shrinking all the statues I can find. I want to use it in my classroom to teach the kids.”

“You’re... a teacher?” He blinks.

“You got a problem with that?” You look offended, to say the least. 

“No.” It’s not what he would peg your occupation as. He didn’t think you had one at all. “How are you planning on shrinking it?”

You rummage through the ugliest fanny pack he has ever had the misfortune of seeing. You pull out a small ring box, complete with a bow tied neatly on top. 

“I was saving this for our third anniversary, but-” you offer him a nervous laugh.

His stony expression doesn’t change, not even a blink. 

“Fine, Jesus, you’re no fun,” you huff, dropping the emotional act when he doesn’t look amused. 

You flip open the lid. Inside there are a few small disks. It looks familiar, he realises.

“Your friend Ant-Boy didn’t file a patent, so I just took his whole shtick.” He wants to defend Scott’s honour; it’s Ant-Man not boy. He doesn’t. He’s too transfixed on what you have in your hand.

“Pym particles.”

“The diet version.” You pick up one of them carefully. “A ripoff, but effective. Just gotta attach it to the thing I want to shrink and give it a few minutes.”

“You’re going to steal the Statue of Liberty,” he says, frankly a little taken aback that you were serious.

“Would you relax? I’ll put it back.”

“That’s not the point,” he damn near exclaims. “You can’t take away the Statue of Liberty just because you feel like it.”

“I literally can.” You point to the chips in your hand. “That’s the point of this, keep up.”

He feels exasperated. He didn’t sign up for this when he became an Avenger.

“Give me the box.” He makes a grab for it but you yank it away from his reach.

“What do you think you’re doing?” 

“I don’t have time for this.” His reruns would begin in an hour.

“That’s my problem, because...” you trail off. 

He rolls his eyes, makes a grab at the box again. His tactic is different this time. He stealthily pins one of your arms down so that you’re basically incapacitated.

“Hey! Stop that.” You fumble against his reach, shoving him with your elbow.

“Just give me the thing and we can all go home for the day,” he huffs, unfazed by your squirming.

“No! Over my dead bod-” 

He doesn’t immediately notice what goes wrong in the scuffle. 

Until you look at the ground near your feet. A disk lay there, undisturbed.

“Is that-” All of a sudden, either he’s getting taller or the ceiling of the boat is getting lower.

“Oops,” you say, not remorseful in the slightest. 

“Are we going to-”

“I’d give it five minutes max.” 

Great. He was stuck on a boat that was beginning to shrink. The other passengers were either oblivious or ignorant to seats that were starting to become too small for them, but Bucky’s heightened senses and extreme reflexes made it hard to skip.

He nudges the piece of tech with his foot. Maybe he can kick it off the boat.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” you warn solemnly. He wants to disagree but doesn’t know enough about the device to dispute you. 

“Fix this,” he hisses, panic slightly rising. His fingers find their way to his phone to send out an emergency text requesting backup and mass evacuation. 

“I think it’s a rather lovely day for a swim, don’t you?” You stare dreamily at the waves that were inching closer up the boat. 

Or you were inching closer to the water. Technicalities were frivolous. 

“There are other people on this boat.”

“River’s big enough for all of us, I reckon.”

“Fix it.” 

“Or what?” There’s a wicked gleam in your eye. “We both know I have the upper hand here.”

“Or I call the entirety of the Avengers here and haul your ass to prison.”

“Will they bring snacks?”

You’re insufferable. You know it. But you also are the fastest way to get out of this situation and right now, he didn’t want to be responsible for a shipwreck simulation. 

“Fine. Tell me what you want.”

“I like soy chips.”

“Soy chi-” He nearly throws his hands up in frustration. “You know what I’m talking about.” 

“I want one historical artifact so I can impress the kids. They think I’m the cool teacher and I want to keep that reputation alive.”

“What makes you think I can arrange for that?”

“You’ve been alive since goddamn dinosaurs roamed this earth, I’m sure you have some connections.” You pause to assess his face. “You know, you don’t look a day over 29. Dermatologists must hate yo-”

“I’ll get you an artifact, now fix the fuckin’ boat.”

“You promise?” You grin brightly. 

He stares at you. You are unyielding. 

The boat’s uncomfortably small and people are beginning to take notice. Worried murmurs fill the air behind him.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” You shrug simply.

You kneel over, picking up the chip from the ground. You do nothing else for two minutes, instead turning away from him to look at the Statue of Liberty that was coming closer.

It takes him a while to realise that half his body isn’t hanging off his chair anymore. The ceiling is moving further and further away from the top of his head. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He wants to strangle you. 

Why did he listen to you when all of this would have been over the minute he kicked it off the ship. 

“You can drop it off at my lair on Monday and pick it up on Friday.” You gather your belongings, leaving him steaming behind you. “Nice talkin’ to ya, Sergeant.” 

You step over him, flashing him a quick smile before walking off the boat with the rest of the tourists as if nothing had just taken place. When he looks down, the stupid ring box is on his lap.

He sits there, unmoving, eyes fixed on the container.

The ferry conductor asks if he’s going to get off the boat. 

He simply shakes his head.

Next part

[agustdakasuga]

Between The Bloodshed | Chapter 18

Genre: Mafia!AU, Angst, Romance, Fluff

Pairing: OT7 x Reader

Characters: Doctor!Reader, Gangster!Namjoon, Gangster!Seokjin, Gangster!Yoongi, Gangster!Hoseok, Gangster!Jimin, Gangster!Taehyung, Gangster!Jungkook

Summary: Being a freelance doctor, this was just supposed to be any other job, helping a private client and taking care of him through his recovery. But you were not expecting to get caught in something so much darker that would change your life entirely.

There are just too many things going on right now with a heavier workload and more responsibilities. But maybe now is the best time to address the emotions that seem to be running too high. 

Warning: This story is fictional and has nothing to do with real life events or the actual members of BTS. It may contain depictions of violence, blood shed/ gore and mentions of abuse. Please read at your own discretion.

Chapter warning(s): Mentions of glass injury, censored curse word by angry Yoongi, reader goes drinking so alcohol mention. 

With the birth of your new niece, you had been even more busy, if that was even possible. Unfortunately, Jisung wasn’t able to stay over anymore because you were worried about him knowing what the boys did as their ‘jobs’. 

“Koo, I know it hurts but you have to stop moving.” You scolded as you used your tweezers to remove the shards of glass from his knuckles. Jungkook whined as he winces in pain. You had to make sure you removed every little piece of he might get an infection. 

“I told you to stop being reckless.” You sighed, placing the pieces of glass onto the cotton pad. 

“I was careful...”

“You punched through a car window. I don’t know how careful that was.” You rolled your eyes. When you were sure all the glass pieces were out, you moved the magnifier lamp away and threw the glass away. 

“I wasn’t going to let him get away. So I punched through the window and pulled him out.” 

“Okay, you already know what is next. So take a deep breath.” You warned, getting the antiseptic spray ready. 

“Can we skip that?” He whined. 

“Can you not get so badly injured?” You retorted, making him pout. You shook the bottle and he took a deep breath, biting his bottom lip and scrunching his face to brace. 

“Okay, we’re done.” You cooed. Jungkook let out tiny whimpers like an injured puppy, his eyes glossing over. You patted his head, gently dabbing his wounds with a cotton. Once that was done, you wrapped his knuckles up, fastening them in place with some medical clips. Jungkook watched as you cleared up the messy area, disinfecting the table after. 

“How’s your niece?” 

“She’s doing good, both her and her mother are getting all the rest and care that they need. Her name is Yuri.” You said, scrolling on your phone to show Jungkook a picture. 

“She’s cute. She has the same eyes as Jisung.” Jungkook smiled. You laughed, nodding in agreement. 

“So... did you find someone to accompany you to the ball yet?” He asked, finger drawing imaginary shapes on your desk. 

“If you couldn’t tell, I’ve been rather busy the past few days. And unfortunately, finding a date for the ball is at the end of my priority list now.” You scoffed, typing on your computer. Jungkook just hummed. 

“Well, I was wondering if-”

BANG!

You turned your head to see Yoongi standing at your door. His shoulders rise and fell with each pant. A deep frown was on his face and even if it was anger, it was very rare to see Yoongi display such strong emotion. You weren’t scared but worried and curious. 

“Out.” Was all he said to Jungkook. Jungkook didn’t even bother arguing like he usually did, standing up and making a beeline for the door. 

“What’s wrong?” You stood up. Yoongi seemed to hesitate for a while, it was obvious he was having an internal debate with himself. He untucked a manila folder from under his arm. 

“Yoong-”

“Just read it.” He cut you off, sliding the folder across your desk to you. You gave him a look before undoing the string, looking at the contents. 

“What does all that mean?” He asked impatiently. 

“Yoongi, this-”

“Just tell me.” He pressed. 

“It’s cancer. That’s all I can tell you now.” You sighed, putting the summary report down. Yoongi seemed shock, walking back into the chair opposite yours. It was silent as you continued looking at the other reports and Yoongi let reality sink in. He stared ahead blankly but you knew Yoongi well enough that he didn’t want to be comforted right now. 

“What else?” He asked. 

“Yoongi, you can shout at me all you want. But I am not telling you anything else until you tell me who this report belongs to.” You said firmly. Yoongi glared at you but you weren’t backing down. 

“Half brother.” He mumbled. Considering Yoongi has never even mentioned any siblings before, you believe this half brother was estranged. 

“He won’t let me near him after what my dad did to his mother. Getting a copy of these reports was the only way to know what was really going on.” Yoongi explained briefly. 

“It’s non-small cell lung cancer, stage 3.” 

“What does that mean? Can he be cured? Whatever needs to be done, I’ll do it.” Yoongi said firmly. 

“At this point, it still seems regional, which means it is only affecting the tissues in the surrounding area. It hasn’t widespread yet. Surgery can be performed to remove the affected tissue followed by chemo or laser therapy to kill off any other affected cells.” You informed. 

“Can you do it?” This was Yoongi practically begging at this point. 

“Can I do it? Yes, I can. Will I do it? No, I won’t.” You said, placing all the medical documents back into a stack, putting it back into the original envelope that it came in. 

“WHY THE F*CK NOT?!” Yoongi stood up with so much force, his chair fell back, crashing onto the ground. 

“If you read the report, you would know that your brother’s cancer has only gotten to this stage because he refuses treatment of any kind. He refuses to take even one pill from his doctor. You force him to do such a big surgery he doesn’t want, any plans you had of making up for your broken sibling relationship will be gone.” You frowned. 

“Hyung...” The others appeared at the door. They had rushed over when they heard the crash. 

“When Min Geumjae comes to me on his own will and tells me he wants the surgery, I’ll do it. But until then, I refuse to even look at his file.” You pushed the manila envelope back to him. 

“Hyung.” Namjoon brought Yoongi out to cool down. You let out a sigh, shivering slightly as you turned your chair around, back facing the boys. 

“This is the last thing I need.” You rubbed your temples. 

“Hey, you alright?” Hoseok’s soft voice appeared on your side. You opened your eyes to meet his worried ones. 

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” You replied a little colder than you intended to, turning back to your computer. The boys cast each other uneasy looks before everyone was ushered out by Jin. Only Jimin remained behind. 

“Say, what are you doing tonight?” He asked, leaning against your desk. 

“Chim, I really don’t have the time for this. If you aren’t injured or need medical help, please go somewhere else. I have work to do.” You said, typing away the report that was on your screen. Even your big computer monitor looked like a mess with multiple windows everywhere. 

“Come out with me. Tonight.”

“Chim, I-”

“I’ll meet you at the foyer. 9pm.” He smiled sweetly before getting off your desk and walked out. You stared at your closed door before shaking your head and turning back to your work. 

It was close to 9 when you came down from your room. You didn’t know how to dress but if you were going out with Jimin, you knew you had to meet standards. 

“Where is he?” You checked the time on your phone. 

“Uh, going out...?” Namjoon saw you and immediately grew curious. You were in a short, black bodycon dress with a slit on your left thigh. 

“Yeah.” You nodded. Some others passed by and also couldn’t help but stare at you all dressed up. They loitered around, wanting to see if they could catch a glimpse of someone picking you up. 

“I’m here! Sorry for being late but we can do now.” Jimin came rushing down, adjusting his suit jacket. He was in a more casual suit than the usual business ones the boys wore, the red jacket and pants complimenting to loose, black undershirt nicely. The others that were there in the foyer were speechless with their eyes wide. Jimin was taking you out?!

“Let’s go.” Your words confirmed their suspicion. 

“You look nice.” Jimin complimented. You let out a hum, bending slightly to wear your shoes. 

“The driver is outside.” He held his arm out for you to take as you headed out the door. You failed the hear the scrambling of footsteps from the others, rushing to the window to see Jimin opening the door for you. 

“What?!” Taehyung screeched. 

“That hyung is good.” Jungkook shook his head. 

The car stopped in front of a building. The neon sign flashed ‘Filter’. You remember this as one of Jimin’s businesses. 

“Come.” The driver opened the door for the both of you. People who were either waiting to get in or entering stopped to stare at the both of you. The girls squealed at Jimin’s good looks but the boy only focused on you. He placed a hand on your waist. 

“Good evening, boss.” The bouncers bowed. 

“That’s the boss?” 

“He’s so good looking!” The people were whispering. When the bouncers opened the velvet rope, Jimin led you in. The staff must have known that Jimin was here because some guys immediately came to you to serve you. 

“I’ve got it, guys. Thanks. But she’s mine.” Jimin waved his boys away. You couldn’t help but heat up at his words. 

“Yes, boss. Have a nice evening.” They wished the both of you and bowed before leaving the both of you. You felt rather lost in this whole situation, you’ve never seen this side of Jimin before. 

“You look like a lost lamb.” Jimin chuckled. He continued to guide you to the elevated VIP platform. Your booth overlooked the other club goers. 

“What would you like to drink? It’s on the house. You can just sit back and relax.” Jimin asked as you sat down. 

“Well, if you say so, Mr Park. Then I’ll start with a red sangria, please.” You ordered with a chuckle. Jimin laughed along as he nodded and sat down beside you on the plush couch, pressing a button on the armrest. In a few seconds, a tall male in a suit came in. His name tag flashed ‘manager’. He bowed deeply to the both of you. 

“A red sangria for her and a beer for me to start.” Jimin ordered. 

“Yes, sir.” He bowed and left. 

“You know, I’m perfectly fine being with the normal people downstairs. I don’t need a VIP booth or any special treatment.” You said. 

“Nonsense. (y/n), don’t you realise? You’ll be granted entrance and a VIP booth to anywhere that you go. It doesn’t matter whether me or the other boys are there.” He raised an eyebrow. 

“What do you mean?” 

“That.” Jimin pointed. You followed his finger to your bracelet on your wrist. The very one that Namjoon gave you when you joined. 

“That bracelet is a symbol that you’re part of the family.” He said briefly. You looked at the bracelet. Even if it was dark, the pink diamond charm was shining brightly next to the wing charm. 

“Don’t take it off.”

You remember Taehyung’s words when he first put the bracelet around your wrist. The manager coming back in with your drinks broke your train of thought. Jimin handed you your drink and you clinked glasses together before taking a sip. You let out a relaxed sigh. 

“It’s good.” You smiled, swirling the drink in your glass. 

“I’m glad. Have as much as you like.” Jimin grinned as he sipped his own beer. He was just happy you were smiling again. 

“Jimin... You probably think I’m cruel, huh? For not helping Yoongi.” You guessed that Jimin knew the situation with Yoongi since he was one of the ones that was the closest to the elder. 

“Why would you think that?” 

“Do you know why I refuse to do the surgery?” You asked as you stared at the drink in your hand. Jimin shook his head. 

“Because, I’ve seen it all before. Families, relationships, torn apart... Because some people think what they’re doing is the best for the patient. But have they really asked the patient what they want? My parents were all for it. Doing big surgeries brought a lot of good image and reputation but I didn’t want to be part of that.” You confessed. 

“(y/n)...”

“That’s why I can’t do it. I’ve seen people bribe patients to do surgeries with such high risk just to give the press something to write about.” You said. 

“I know Yoongi only has good intentions. He only wants his brother to live. But at what cost? If his brother doesn’t want it, who are we to make that decision for him? We can’t just make him do it.” 

“I never realised...” Jimin said. 

“It’s just the way the world is. Why do you think I live through my parents’ snide remarks instead of giving in to work for them?” You chuckled bitterly. 

“A son of an old patient contacted me that day. His mother needs a heart valve replacement, which can be a rather risky surgery considering her age and it’s open heart surgery.” You started. 

“Is she going to do it?”

“She didn’t... That’s why her son wanted me to convince her. I told him I would look at the medical reports before speaking to her. In the end, I declined. Yes, cruelly, I’m letting someone die. But why am I trying so hard to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do?” You looked at him. 

“Of course, I know when people have a chance of living and yet, they refuse, it’s a shame. But I willingly live with that guilt and regret.” You threw your head back. Jimin wrapped an arm around you. 

“I hate seeing you upset.” He comforted. You closed your eyes, putting an arm around him. 

-

“Hehehe.” You giggled as Jimin carried you into the house. Maybe you had a bit too much to drink but you were very insistent that you were not drunk. The other boys came down. 

“Oh my... How did she get so drunk?” Jin’s eyes widened when he saw you. None of them have ever seen you in that state before. Seeing the other boys standing there, you blinked at them before grinning and waving at them. Namjoon was the first to take you from Jimin. He gave you an amused smile and you poked his dimple. 

“Cute.” You commented. 

“Let’s get you to bed.” Namjoon said softly. 

“But I’m not sleepy...” You mumbled, cuddling against his chest. Jungkook patted your head. 

“Hyung, can we talk?” Jimin asked Yoongi. Yoongi nodded his head wordlessly, walking with the shorter male out to the garden. Namjoon looked at the two before bringing you upstairs. 

“Who are you?” You tilted your head. 

“Namjoon, doc. Did you forget me already?” He chuckled.

“Doc... I’m a doctor?” Your eyes widened as you pointed at yourself. Namjoon hummed in reply with a nod, kicking your room door open. He placed you to sit on your bed. 

“Woah... I’m a doctor. That’s cool. And what about you, Mr Namjoon? Are you a doctor too?” You asked. 

“No, I’m not a doctor. Only you are a doctor.” He said, grabbing some makeup wipes and began to gently wipe the makeup off your face. You seemed so fascinated with the life you were learning about from Namjoon. 

“You’re really nice, Mr Namjoon.” You giggled. 

“Thank you. Now, doc, do you think you can change out of your dress and into these?” He asked, holding up a shirt and some shorts. You stared at the articles of clothing before nodding your head. Namjoon ushered you to your bathroom and closed the door, staying on the other side. 

“I’m done.” You said. Thankfully, you were able to successfully change. Namjoon tucked you into bed. 

“Goodnight, doc.” He wished. 

“No, Mr Namjoon, don’t goooooo.” You whined, holding onto his wrist. 

“Come on, doc. Be good, you have to sleep. We can hang out tomorrow.” He coaxed. You pouted with a frown, crossing your arms like a little kid throwing a tantrum. 

“Well, then what do you want to do?” 

“I don’t know... I want to stay with you.” You said sadly. Namjoon smiled endearingly, patting your head. He helped you out of bed and into his room. 

“You can stay here with me.” He got under the covered. You snuggled close to him as he leaned against the headboard, reading his book. Even if you weren’t doing anything, you were content. 

“Are you comfortable?” Namjoon asked. You nodded your head, yawning again. He reached over to pat your head.

“Mr Namjoon?” 

“Hmm?”

“Do you have a girlfriend? Or someone that you like?” 

“I don’t have a girlfriend... But there may be someone I fancy. Actually, doc-” When he heard no sound from you, he stopped. Looking down, Namjoon saw that you were fast asleep, tucked under his arm comfortably. Namjoon closed his book, putting it on the nightstand before turning off the lights. 

“She probably thinks I’m just like her parents. Or all those other people she hates.” Yoongi sighed, leaning against the railing of the gazebo. 

“She’s doesn’t, hyung. You know doc isn’t like that. She knows all you wanted to do was help your brother. None of us would know all this, she only told me tonight.” Jimin shrugged. 

“All I did was add to her stress.” 

“Hyung, stop. Doc always tells you about taking all the blame on yourself and how it’s a bad habit.” Jimin scolded, making Yoongi hang his head. 

“Well, she said that she won’t do the surgery already. So I guess there’s really nothing else I can do except speak to my brother to try and get him to do the surgery... Or just watch him die.” Yoongi said bitterly. Jimin knew Yoongi was just at lost and as painful as it sounded, those were really his only options. He wrapped his hands around the older.

“No matter what his decision is, I’m sure he would appreciate your support. It’s never too late to mend a broken relationship.” Jimin comforted. 

“That’s if he ever wants to see me again.” 

“You’ll never know, hyung. Maybe a serious, sit down conversation is all you need.” Jimin pulled away with a chuckle. Yoongi forced a small smile, nodding his head in agreement. 

“About doc, I’ll speak to her soon. Thanks for taking her out.” Yoongi patted Jimin’s shoulder.

“I didn’t do it for you.” 

“Huh?” 

“I didn’t do it as a favour for you. I did it because I hate seeing the woman I love upset.” Jimin said before turning around to talk back into the house. 

~~

Ko-fi link

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[muffinbeliever]

When the Stars Align [07]

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Soulmate!Reader

Word Count: 4717

Warnings: language, sexual content, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it!), ANGST, but also cute date fluff, Lisa Braeden (yes this is a warning), crying, body insecurity

Summary: Soulmate!AU– Everyone has the first words their soulmate says to them tattooed on their wrists. You and your cat are living a normal life in Fort Collins, Colorado when three men come bursting through your door, completely changing your life. Reader-insert story. Starts around S06E08, but Sam has his soul, and it doesn’t really follow the series from there

A/N: HELLO !!!! i apologize for the delay my classes have been swamping me with work and i already had writers block but i finished this chapter like five minutes ago and i'm desperate to post it and see what you guys think ! please be sure to leave comments and likes as always <3

Masterlist | When the Stars Align Masterlist

Sunlight illuminated Dean’s face that you admired as you drove along the open road. The windows were down, a light breeze flowing through the car. Occasionally, Dean would catch you staring at him, but you didn’t mind and neither did he.

You giggled when you noticed a familiar neon sign and the red leather booths that peaked through the window, having been here only a couple of hours before.

“What?” Dean looked over at you, nervous as he didn’t know why you laughed. You shook your head, before replying.

“I just really like this place,” you said, refraining from telling him about your earlier excursion with Thomas, not wanting it to ruin the moment. He gave you a soft smile.

“I remember,” he said, his eyes shining with fondness, “You mentioned that you come here a lot when you were showing me around.” Your heart soared at the fact that he remembered the small detail.

He parked the car, before quickly getting out of the car, jogging over to your side to open the door before you could even register what had happened. He extended his arm and you giggled at his silliness before getting out of the car. He closed the door behind you, his hand coming to rest on the small of your back, gently leading you towards the diner.

There weren’t many people and you were grateful, hoping to have a quiet dinner with your soulmate and get to know him a bit better. He grabbed a booth snuggled against a corner of the room, gesturing you to sit down. You took one side of the table and he took the other side.

Two menus were placed on the table, and the dark-haired waitress flashed Dean a smile. She looked a couple of years older than you and her black jeans and tight shirt hugged her curves, her tied apron accentuating her slim waist. Her hair fell in gentle waves, framing her face in a way that yours never did.

“My name is Carmen, I’ll be serving you tonight,” she said directly to Dean. You shifted uncomfortably in your seat, and you caught Dean glance at you.

“Can I start you off with anything to drink?” She asked, and Dean nodded.

“Yeah, I’ll have a Coke, please. Sweetheart, what about you?” He asked you kindly.

“A water, please,” you said to Carmen. Her eyes roamed your face and clothes, and she gave you a smirk.

“I’ll be right back with your drinks,” she said, winking at Dean before walking away, her hips swaying with each step. There was a familiar sinking feeling in your chest that reeked of self-doubt.

Who did you think you are? Bagging a guy like Dean Winchester? Obviously, you weren’t terrible to look at, but you sure as hell weren’t a head-turner. Guys didn’t double take when you passed by nor did they try to pursue you. The only exception was Thomas, and you were sure that it was more of a friendly attraction than romantic.

You picked up a menu, not even sparing Dean a glance, trying to focus on what you were going to eat. Despite having eaten here many times, you were surprised at the selection they offered. Most times, you got a salad, sometimes switching it up with a burger, but the prospect of a pastrami sandwich sounded especially inviting tonight. You were debating ordering the pastrami, but decided that it probably wouldn’t look very attractive to eat. Besides, you were already self-conscious about your body, might as well try to eat healthily. Out of the corner or your eye, you saw Carmen approach your table, placing down the two drinks and straws.

“Have you decided what to get, sugar?” Carmen said, flashing a smile at Dean, not that he noticed. He was still looking at the menu, preoccupied with the dozens of choices to choose from.

“Yeah, uh… I’ll get the double bacon cheeseburger with fries on the side,” he said, before looking up and handing her his menu.

“And you?” She asked in a bored tone.

“I’ll get the chicken salad please, dressing on the side,” you said and she wrote it down before leaving. Dean gave you a look.

“Salad? I thought you liked burgers,” he observed, and you felt your heart sink. You didn’t want to be a salad girl, but here you were. You chastised yourself, this is Dean. He doesn’t care if you eat a pastrami sandwich.

“You’re right, I’ll be right back,” you said with newfound courage before getting up from the booth and walking over to the counter. You were able to call out to Carmen.

“Actually, can I have the pastrami sandwich with a side of fries instead of the salad?” She scoffed.

“Figures,” she muttered, “You don’t look like the salad type.”

Her bitchy tone cut through your heart like a knife. You were taken aback, unable to think for a second. You tried formulating a response, but she was already gone. You looked over at Dean who was typing away on his phone, probably texting Sam. You were defeated once again by a beautiful woman.

You made your way to the table, sitting down, lost in your thoughts. Dean’s phone was put away and you were staring at the table. Thinking for a second, you got up, and a look of confusion flashed in Dean’s eyes, but it was gone when you slid into the booth right next to him.

“Hey there, sweetheart. Get a little lonely over there?” He joked and you rolled your eyes before snuggling closer to him, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne.

“Just missed you was all,” you mumbled into his shoulder and he kissed the top of your head.

“I missed you too, sweetheart,” he said, “but I can tell something is wrong.” He gave you a knowing look.

“Carmen is pretty,” you admitted, hating that you were being petty.

“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” he said, and you scoffed, pulling away to look at him.

“I’m not jealous,” you said, hoping you sounded more confident than you felt.

“I was just… I was making sure that… I…” you stammered before sighing, your shoulders falling in defeat.

“Yeah, okay maybe I was a little jealous. But clearly, we’re here together and she just kept staring at you, and don’t even get me started on how she talked to me.” You could feel yourself sinking deeper into your thoughts, hating that your stupid insecurities were about to ruin the date.

“What did she say to you?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowing. You shook your head, debating on not telling him, but his deep green eyes were full of concern and worry.

“Just that I don’t look like the salad type,” you said, lowering your head in embarrassment. A hand came up to cup your cheek and your eyes met his once again.

“That’s bullshit. You’re beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I’m only yours, sweetheart,” he said, sincerely, before pulling you into a gentle kiss. It was scary how easily that calmed you down. You had struggled with insecurities for the majority of your life, and it usually took a couple of days, if not weeks, to pull yourself out of the dark hole in your mind, but one kiss from Dean, and all of the sudden, your heart stops racing and your thoughts slow.

Your kiss was disrupted by a clatter of plates on the table. Carmen didn’t speak a word to either of you and she was about to leave when Dean called out to her.

“You’re going to apologize to my girlfriend and then we’re getting a new server. You have no right to speak to her like that,” Dean defended you, an angry look on his face.

“Dean,” you whispered, a bit embarrassed by how this was going. She wasn’t exactly wrong, you weren’t supermodel-thin nor did you have amazing curves that drove men wild.

“Sorry,” Carmen said, not sounding sorry at all, before spinning on her heels and walking away from the table.

“Bitch,” Dean muttered, his eyebrows furrowing as he noticed you were lost in your thoughts, a small frown on your face. He pressed a kiss to the side of your head before you turned to look up at him.

“Let’s just enjoy our date,” you said with a hopeful smile, and he nodded. Forty minutes, a pastrami sandwich, and a double bacon cheeseburger later, you were giggling like a schoolgirl, enamored by the man sitting next to you.

“Sammy was sitting on the handlebars while I rode us to the hospital!” Dean exclaimed and you laughed at the story. He snatched a fry off your plate and dipped it in ketchup before shoving it in his mouth. You were acutely aware of the warmth radiating from his thigh that was pressed against yours. Caught up in his green eyes, you didn’t notice a man approach the table.

“How was the food?” You jumped, shocked at his sudden appearance. It was the manager, John or Jacob or something with a ‘J’. He came over after you complained about Carmen, apologizing for her behavior and telling you that he would be serving you for the rest of the night.

You beamed at him, completely satisfied with the pastrami sandwich that was now happily sitting in your stomach.

“Great!” Dean responded, flashing him a smile. The manager returned the smile before continuing.

“Because of your unpleasant start to the evening, dessert is on us. We have root beer floats, ice cream sundaes, and a variety of pies,” he listed, and you immediately looked at Dean whose eyes lit up.

“We’ll take a slice of apple pie, please,” Dean responded right away, his hand squeezing yours in excitement. You giggled at the smile on his face. The manager nodded and left the table, the two of you falling into a comfortable silence. You looked up at him, admiring the freckles dotting his face. He gave you a soft smile that you returned and you leaned in for a kiss. It was a chaste kiss, not one of need or lust, but adoration and love.

Throughout the months, you have accepted that you had fallen for the oldest Winchester brother. There was the obvious fact that he was your soulmate, the one person in the world made exactly for you, but you knew that even if that weren’t the case, you would have still been in love with Dean. You loved his wit and charm, often catching yourself imagining his flirtatious winks. Not only was he gorgeous to look at, but he didn’t flaunt it like other men did. Sure, he knew he was attractive, but you at times, you sensed deep-rooted insecurities from him, which you thought was ridiculous since he was basically built like a Greek god. He was selfless to a fault; always putting everyone before himself. His loyalty to Sam was admirable, and you had no doubt that he would do anything for those he loved.

The manager placed a giant steaming slice of pie between the two of you, two forks on the side of the plate as well as whipped cream. You expected Dean to dig right in, but he looked at you expectantly. The scent of the spiced apple filled wafted from the plate and made your mouth salivate. Dean picked up a fork and detached a large piece from the tip of the slice. Before you could even register his actions, he brought the fork up to your mouth and pressed it against your closed lips. You accepted it without question, humming as the warm treat hit your tongue.

“That bad, huh?” Dean joked with a twinkle in his eye. You smiled at him before returning the favor. Your fork didn’t grab nearly as big of a piece as his did, but you focused on the way his lips wrapped around the fork. His tongue swiped at his upper lip, not wanting to waste a single crumb of pie.

Heat pooled in your belly and you clenched your thighs together, remembering just how much of an expert he was with his tongue. He groaned, his eyes closed as he savored the pie, and the sound shot straight to the apex of your thighs. You let out a small whimper, and his eyes flashed open. His green eyes swept your figure, taking in your squished thighs and flushed neck before smirking at you.

“Later, sweetheart,” he promised, his fingers dancing on the top of your thighs. You could feel his warmth through your jeans, sparks of electricity shooting through you with every touch. You shuffled closer to him, wanting your bodies as close as possible.

“You want some more?” He offered to you and you nodded, not trusting yourself to speak. Dean got another piece of pie and shoved it in his mouth. You looked at him, confused, and he smirked at you once again before pulling you into a searing kiss. You let out a soft moan as his tongue played with yours, the taste of apple pie fresh in your mouths. His hand tightened around your thigh at the sound. He was the first to pull away, breathless.

“Let’s get this to go, ya?” He suggested with a wink and you giggled, nodding. You were lost in his smile, noting the way his eyes crinkled at the corners and his full lips turned up. He waved the manager down and asked for a box and the check. You placed the pie delicately in the take-out box as Dean set down enough cash to cover for the meal and tip.

You slid out of the booth first, pulling your leather jacket on and Dean’s hand rested on the small of your back, leading the both of you out of the diner. As you expected, the air was crisp and chilled. He opened the door of the Impala for you, making sure you were safely inside before shutting it. You watched as he jogged over to the driver's side, sliding in next to you. Grateful for the long bench, you shifted closer to Dean and his hand came to rest comfortably on your thigh.

The soft sounds of Bon Jovi whispered through the speakers, barely noticeable unless you strained your ears. The windows were closed this time due to the slightly colder weather, but you were warm with Dean beside you.

There wasn’t much talking on the way home. You sat in a comfortable silence, occasionally feeling his eyes on your face, but every time you looked at him, he was looking away, a smile on his face. After the third time, you huffed and grabbed his hand from your thigh, interlacing your fingers with his. He looked at you, surprise written on his face, and you gave him a triumphant smile. He brought your interlocked hands up to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of your hand.

Before you knew it, the familiar light of your street came into view and he pulled his car up in front of your house. You didn’t want to let go of his hand, so you slid out his door after he did, holding the box of pie in your other hand. The crickets were chirping as you walked up to the front door.

‘Later, sweetheart,’ came the echo of his voice throughout your mind, and you pulled him into the house, roughly kissing him once the door was closed. His arms came to your shoulders, gently pushing off the sleeves of your leather jacket. You struggled a little bit, not wanting to drop the pie in your hand, before Dean took it from you, setting it on the small table next to your door that usually held nothing but a small succulent.

He pulled off your shirt in a swift motion and his lips began traveling down your neck, occasionally sucking and licking sensitive spots. You gasped as he nibbled your earlobe.

“So responsive,” he murmured and an involuntary shiver ran through your body. His leg gently pushed your legs apart and his thigh pressed against your covered core. His hands gripped your waist, and you ground against his thigh, the friction of your jeans rubbing against your sensitive bud in a deliciously perfect way.

“Good girl,” he praised, continuing his trail of kisses from your neck down to the tops of your breasts.

“So beautiful,” he whispered to himself, staring at your flushed chest. You were wearing a simple bra, nothing fancy or particularly sexy, but Dean made you feel like you were in expensive lingerie, draped in the finest lace and silk in the world. You moaned wantonly, begging for more. You picked up the rhythm, moving faster against his thigh. He watched you with lust-filled eyes, devouring you. The pressure between your legs kept building until it finally peaked, and you came with a loud moan. Dean placed gentle kisses on your sweaty forehead, relaxing you as you came down from your high. His leg came down, setting your feet gently on the floor. Your legs felt like jello, occasional spasms wracking through them.

“Maybe we should move this to the bedroom,” you suggested, not wanting the night to be over. He picked you up in his arms and carried you bridal style into your room. He gently tossed you onto the bed. He peeled his clothes off and you wriggled out of your tight jeans and soaked underwear. Your hands went behind your back to unclasp your bra and you flung it off the bed, hearing it land on the floor with a soft thud. You laid back down on the bed, fully naked and ready for Dean.

His eyes swept over your naked body and you spied his cock straining through the fabric of his boxers. He quickly discarded his underwear and laid on top of you, his firm chest pressing against your naked breasts. You could feel him hard against your stomach and you snaked a hand between the two of you, wrapping your hand around his shaft.

Your thumb wiped across the slit, catching the beads of precum that were leaking from his tip. His breath caught and you slowly pumped him in your hands. One of his large hands came to rest on your right breast, his thumb brushing against your pebbled nipple. The other hand dipped into your wet folds, collecting your juices on his digits. You watched him suck them off his fingers before they were venturing into you once again. You whined, not wanting to wait another second for his cock to be inside you.

“Please,” you said, squirming beneath him. He had one hand lazily circling your clit and the other pinching and tugging at your breasts.

“Please what, sweetheart?” he asked, power dripping from his words. You searched for more friction, but couldn’t find any.

“Please fuck me,” you begged. “I want to feel you inside me please. Fill me up with your big cock.”

“Fuck, baby,” he swore under his breath, before lining himself at your entrance. With a single thrust, he was completely unleashed in you, and you let out an embarrassingly loud moan. He groaned into your neck, still not used to your tightness and warmth surrounding him. When you were adjusted to his large size, he began moving inside you.

His cock dragged along your walls with every thrust, emptying you and filling you repeatedly. Your legs hooked around his back, driving him deeper into you, hitting places you didn’t even know existed. Your moans bounced off the walls, as did his low grunts.

“Come for me, sweetheart,” he demanded, his fingers working your clit once again. Your eyes clenched shut as you came around him with a scream. He pulled you into a bruising kiss and his thrusts became sloppy as he raced to catch his release, pulling out of you and spilling himself on your chest and stomach. Spent, he rolled next to you, the two of you heaving to catch your breath.

“Wow,” you whispered once your racing heart began to slow. He turned his face towards you, grinning.

“Yeah,” he agreed, before climbing out of bed to get you a damp towel. The two of you cleaned up in silence. He pulled on boxers and you pulled on underwear and his t-shirt, switching the light off before falling back into bed. His arms rested around you, your chests pressed against each other.

“Thank you for taking me on a date,” you said, catching his eyes with yours, “I’ve never been on one before, but I’m glad I waited for you.” You felt his body tense and his lips pressed tightly together.

“Sweetheart,” he started, and you saw regret fill his eyes.

“I should’ve waited for you. I wish I did,” he admitted, his voice tense. You shook your head and tried to press closer to him, but he pulled away.

“Dean,” you asked, confused, but it was his turn to shake his head.

“I never thought I’d meet you. I always thought this—,” he gestured towards your body, “you— I thought it was impossible. The life I live is not made for soulmates. I never imagined myself living a normal life with my soulmate. I couldn’t even bear the thought of it. So I didn’t.”

He ran a hand down his face, an exhausted sigh escaping his lips. You tugged at his hand, wanting to see him.

“I know that you have more experience than I do, Dean. That doesn’t bother me,” you tried to explain, but he pulled his hand away from yours.

“You don’t even know half of it,” he snapped back, and you pulled back at his sharp tone.

“Then explain it to me,” you demanded, knowing that this conversation had been boiling for a while and that it was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head again. Dean must’ve known it too, because his eyes softened and he rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

“At first, it was just a bunch of one-night stands,” he started, and you laid stiffly, afraid that he would stop talking if you moved.

“I spent a lot of nights picking up girls in bars. I would flirt with them and take ‘em home. I’d show them a good time and leave before they’d wake up in the morning. It went on like that for years. I didn’t think I’d ever meet you. Hell, I didn’t even know if I’d be alive to meet you.

“But then I met Lisa, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to spend another night with a girl. I ended up spending a whole week at her place. I knew she wasn’t my soulmate. I knew that her soulmate died in a car accident years before. I knew that the universe didn’t perfectly make us for each other, but at the time, I didn’t care. Sam and Dad were on a case and I was alone.

“I thought about her a lot during my time on the road. I wanted to cling onto something— I needed to cling onto something. Years passed, and I still didn’t meet you. Me and Sammy ended up working a case in her city. I met her son.”

Your breath hitched. Her son? Dean turned his head towards you at the sound and saw the panic flash across your eyes.

“Oh no, Ben wasn’t my kid. I swear,” he tried to reassure you, but you didn’t feel comforted at the thought, you merely nodded, gesturing for him to resume his story.

“The apocalypse was approaching, and I was scared. I was weak and scared. I didn’t think I’d make it, and I had accepted the fact that I wouldn’t meet you before the world ended. I thought Lisa and Ben were all I had. I dreamed about her, quite a bit, really. I dreamed about having a life with her, mowing the lawn on Saturdays and picking Ben up from baseball practice. I visited her again before the whole Lucifer-Michael showdown happened. I told her that I’d made arrangements to keep her and Ben safe, and she asked me to stay with her, but I knew that I couldn’t. I had to be there for Sammy. For Bobby.

“But then, Sam was in the cage. I was lost and broken. So I did the only thing that I could think of. I left the hunting life and moved in with Lisa.” His words pierced you like a knife, your heart shattering into pieces. Tears pooled in your eyes.

You weren’t exactly sure why you were upset. It wasn’t his fault that the two of you hadn’t met at the time. It wasn’t his fault that he met Lisa before he met you. It wasn’t his fault that he sought comfort in her when you weren’t there for him. You knew it was no one’s fault, just circumstance, but that didn’t keep you from feeling a sting of betrayal.

“How long?” You whispered, knowing that if you spoke any louder it would crack and you would burst into tears. You weren’t even sure if you wanted to know the answer. He was silent for a moment, and you thought he wouldn’t respond.

“A year,” he said, his voice hoarse, seemingly filled with regret, concern, and pain. Your stomach dropped. A year? He spent a whole year with her. A whole year with her and her son. Their son. It didn’t matter that Dean wasn’t Ben’s biological father, you already knew that Dean loved him like his own. You let out a shaky breath, preparing yourself to ask the question that had been floating around your mind ever since he started.

“Did you love her?”

You couldn’t even meet his eyes. You looked anywhere but him, your eyes roaming over your ceiling instead of the green eyes that were staring at you. He was quiet, and you closed your eyes, feeling tears spill down the side of your face.

“I thought I did, but I don’t know anymore,” came his whispered reply. “In some ways, it probably was love. But not the kind of love that would survive. I couldn’t live a life without hunting. She couldn’t live a life with hunting.”

You winced at his words. The implication that if they were able to compromise, he wouldn’t be laying next to you right now, but next to her. You wished he had just said yes. Maybe it would’ve hurt less.

“Okay,” you said because there was nothing else to say. You contemplated kicking him out of the bed, but you still loved him, and you knew that it would just pain you more. You turned over on your side, your back facing him. You pulled the covers up, wanting them to swallow you whole. There was movement on the bed and you heard the shuffling of sheets, feeling Dean’s warm body come close to yours to hold you, but you tensed up.

“Please don’t,” you whispered, and he stilled before respecting your wishes, retreating back to his side of the bed. You gripped a pillow against your side, hugging it for comfort. You tried to keep your sobs silent, but there was no use hiding them.

You cried for your pain and hurt, wanting to hate Dean, but you couldn’t. You cried for the love lost between the two of you. You cried because you didn’t know if he even wanted you. But most of all, you cried for Dean. You cried for the burdens he’s endured and that you couldn’t be there for him during times of hardship. You cried because you knew that it wasn’t Dean’s fault, yet here you were punishing him because you were really punishing yourself.

As your tears slowed and your breath became steady again, you were exhausted. You were already drifting off to sleep when you felt Dean’s fingers in your hair and a gentle kiss to your forehead. Too tired to argue, you snuggled into his body and let sleep take you away.

Taglist: @akshi8278 @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @lanea-1 @slamminmine

[silentsnowdrop]

Rather the Devil You Know

(Warnings: Murder, Blood, Guns, Medical Experimentation, Violence Against Animals and technically Nudity.)

The Vault was a dingy little place on the outside, with off-white boards deliberately grey with grime. The front door was hung slightly off-kilter, and the neon sign outside flickered every few seconds. Nilo didn’t even blink as he swung the door open, letting it creak shut behind him and toeing off his shoes to put them in the shoe holder. The inner door was much sturdier, warm oak and brass, and he nodded to the hat drone that opened it as he stepped through.

The room inside was a strange, yet comfortable, combination of sleek modernity and rustic warmth. Various chairs and couches held teens and young adults playing video games or muttering over homework, but Nilo only had eyes for one head of spiked white hair, tinged faintly green by an internal glow.

“Hey, Kusanagi, you free tonight?”

Nilo gave his fellow villain a bright grin as Kusanagi looked up. Kusanagi, for his part, rolled his glowing green eyes, setting aside his phone and lounging back on the couch he was sitting on. “I suppose I can make myself free. Why?”

“Well, word on the street is that we’ve got ourselves a pair of out-of-town villains holed up in the supposedly about-to-be-demolished old printing plant.” Nilo frowned at his phone, searching through the information he’d been sent for the highlights. “Sounds like a lovely mixture of genetic manipulation and tech. Hyun Ki themselves isn’t available for backup tonight but they’re indicating that if we don’t take care of this soon, we might have to get,” Nilo shuddered dramatically, “actual heroes involved.”

“And we can’t have that.” Kusanagi tilted his head. “I do have to ask though—why me? Genetic manipulation is not my area of expertise, and it’s not as if we’re wanting for ways to shut down tech that even a brain-dead monkey could use.”

Nilo paused. When he spoke again, his voice was cold, even as he tried to keep it light. “Our new friends have an order list for new genetic monstrosities, and at the top are ones derived from Redshift, Quantum Break, and Timeskip.”

Kusanagi’s eyes flashed red. “Oh, so they think it’s a good idea to touch my family?” Nilo blinked, and Kusanagi was on his feet, teeth bared in a poor excuse for a smile. “Well, that won’t do at all; Machina has a reputation to uphold.” Nilo blinked again, and Kusanagi was at the door, dying nanomachines glittering in the air between them as they sank to the floor in a ghost of Kusanagi’s form. “I’ll meet you there at seven. Don’t be late.”

***

The sun was just setting as a hat drone deposited Coldsnap on the empty roof of the old office building across from the paper factory. The dying light painted the facade a warmer red than its dusty, faded brick truly was and reflected off of the few remaining glass shards in the windows in shades of yellow and orange too bright to look at. Coldsnap sighed as he waved the hat goodbye and tugged his helmet on. “Kinda sucks they’re tearing it down,” he muttered to himself. “It’s a cool old building.”

“And what, precisely, do you propose this mysterious ‘they’ do with it?” a soft voice asked in his ear with just the barest hint of mechanical buzz.

The only thing that kept Coldsnap from plummeting off of the roof was Machina’s hand hooked into one of the kevlar-and-plastic panels that made up his actual combat suit. Coldsnap let himself be hauled back, then aimed a swat that the cackling madman he called a friend just let phase through his head. “You are a grade A asshole. Please tell me I didn’t breathe any of you in!”

Machina rolled his eyes, which were still scarlet and now pulsing in time with the circuits that decorated his facsimile of a body suit. “I don’t let people breathe me in.” A sharp grin split his face, and he jerked his head at the plant. “I was shutting down cameras and checking their systems.” He waggled his eyebrows in a way that no human could. “They have a sprinkler system.”

Coldsnap snorted. “Okay, you’re forgiven.” He got to his feet, dusting his suit off, then stepped over to the edge of the building. There was a faint buzz behind him, and a second later, Machina was on the ground, smirking up at him. Coldsnap rolled his eyes, then scrambled down the fire escape after him.

They sauntered up to the building—or, rather, Coldsnap sauntered, while Machina gave up all pretense of human movement and glided beside him. A small swirl of nanomachines split off from one of Machina’s hands and sank into Coldsnap’s helmet, and the blueprints for the building appeared on his HUD in a translucent haze of red. Coldsnap squinted at them, then cut Machina a sideways glance. “So, what’s your plan?”

“For once, I think straightforward is our best choice.” Machina spread his arms, whirling to glide backwards so he could face Coldsnap. “You go in big, get their attention, and I give you backup while I bring down the computers. Simple, effective, and hopefully it will keep us in character.”

“And if it doesn’t, hopefully Silvertongue won’t ream us out too much.” Coldsnap leaned against the wall next to the door. At first glance, it looked like he could break the simple wood with an easy kick, but a closer look revealed metal glinting at the edges of the door, and a well-concealed keypad hidden in some sort of electrical monitor box. It was a decent job at hiding a lair, but not quite up to par for someone trained by Pain Management.

Machina’s hands hovered over the box, streams of nanomachines forming a red haze between his palms and the electronics within. “Frankly, I’m not too worried. Silvertongue knows he can’t control us, and Pain Management will be impressed.” There was a beep and a click, and the door slid open, revealing a well-lit, sterile-white hallway behind it. Machina leaned back slightly, and as Coldsnap watched, his hands began to slowly dissolve. “Ready?”

Coldsnap grinned behind the glass of his helmet and dropped into a sprinter’s crouch. “Set.”

Machina rolled his eyes, then vanished into a cloud of nanomachines that quickly dispersed into every piece of electronics Coldsnap could see. Silence reigned for a moment, broken only by the whispering of a trashbag bouncing on the wind like an urban tumbleweed.

Then the lights in the hallway went from white to red, and a soft waltz began to play over the speakers inside. The sprinklers erupted in a deluge of questionably-clean water, and Machina’s voice purred in his ear, “Go.”

Coldsnap shot forward. Before him, the water froze in an ever-expanding wave, and he tucked himself into an aerodynamic arch and skated forward over it, grinning like the madman he also was. “Swan Lake? Really? You had to go with Swan Lake?”

“It’s one of your favorites, and it’s perfectly unbefitting violence.” Machina’s voice was as even as if they were walking down the street. “Speaking of, they’ve let slip some of their creations. Sixty feet out.”

Coldsnap waved a hand, and some of the falling water coalesced into several marble-sized orbs. “Oh, good. I was worried they wouldn’t have noticed us.”

The first two monstrosities burst out of hidden panels right in front of Coldsnap—huge, vaguely doglike creations covered in bristling spikes that dripped with something oily and green. Coldsnap leapt as they snapped at him, water droplets freezing into tiny prisms as he arced through the air, then landed lightly and spun so he could send two of his orbs through their skulls while they wondered where their prey had gone.

“I’m not actually convinced they have noticed us,” Machina drawled. “I know we’ve technically gone domestic, but I thought we’d rate higher than a few mutated dogs.”

“What about a mutated fire-breathing snake?” Coldsnap ducked as said snake tried to melt his helmet to his face. His ice orbs sublimated into steam with the rest of the falling water around him, then coalesced into inch-long needles that skewered the snake and left it twitching on the ground. “I mean, I am an ice user, so—”

“You took that thing out in five point three seven seconds. No, it does not count. Cat.”

“Cat?”

Something that resembled a cat with tentacles slammed into his visor, clinging to his helmet with its suckers. With a cry of confused disgust, Coldsnap yanked the tentacat off of his head and flung it at the wall. It stuck there with a furious hiss, and Coldsnap prepared for it to spit acid or fling spines.

It started crawling down the wall. As it reached the water ponding on the floor, it put out one tentative tentacle, then hissed again and pulled the tentacle back with a wet slap.

Coldsnap blinked. “Uhhhh...so are you going to attack me or not?”

The tentacat meowed plaintively at him and crawled back up the wall until it was at head height. Two of the cat’s tentacles reached out to him, wiggling slightly, and it blinked at him with wide, frankly adorable eyes.

“I’m going to take that as a no?” Coldsnap stepped forward and gently pulled the tentacat off the wall to set it on his shoulder. It butted against his helmet, and he scratched behind its ears, then smiled a bit as it purred. “I’m keeping the tentacat, Machina.”

There was no response.

Coldsnap frowned uneasily. “Machina?”

There was nothing but the soft waltz and the falling water.

“Damn it. Coldsnap to Machina, do you copy?”

“Copy,” Machina finally responded in a flatly mechanical voice that sent a shiver through Coldsnap’s body. “I need you on the third level. Sending path now; all non-friendly non-recoverable monstrosities neutralized. Supervillains still unlocated.”

Coldsnap slowly started skating again. “What did you find?”

“What they wanted with my family’s DNA.” There was a soft crackle of static, the sound of Machina imitating a steadying breath. “Just...get down here.”

And with that terse order, Machina closed the line.

Coldsnap skated in silence, following the small map that Machina had made to guide him. Occasionally, he passed the bodies of various monstrosities, and after the first ones made the tentacat hiss and spit, he was careful to cover the poor thing’s eyes whenever he saw a new one.

(He couldn’t blame it. The bodies looked perfectly fine. No sign of struggle, no sign of illness. They had just dropped where they stood, leaving eerily still corpses behind like hyperrealistic statues.)

The winding path took him down two flights of stairs and dead-ended at a thick steel door labeled “Lab 1.” A fisheye lens stared down at him from above the door, and as he stared up at it, the door slid open. For a moment, he hesitated. Then he slowly stepped into the dry, red-lit room beyond. “Machina?”

“Over here.”

Coldsnap did not scream. He jumped, and a sound escaped from his throat, but it was not a scream–more of a breathless squeak, almost immediately swallowed up by the silence. His head snapped around to the source of the voice, and he let a little whimper of relief free when he saw Machina floating in front of a bank of monitors. “Don’t do that!”

Machina didn’t so much as blink. The only sign he hadn’t just frozen was the slow pulse of red light that ran through his circuits and the dying nanomachines that fell in a golden stream from his hands and feet. Coldsnap eyed the small mounds of electronic ash below his friend, then tentatively asked, “Are you okay?”

Machina vibrated slightly as his voice emanated from his entire being. “Fine. Go check on the kids.”

“The ki—?”

“They’re behind you. I’m searching for the assholes who hurt them.” Machina flicked a glance at Coldsnap without even twitching his head. “And your cat.”

Coldsnap blinked, then turned to find two plexiglass cells wedged into the other end of the room. One was blacked out, but through its shattered door Coldsnap could see that it was empty save for a cot with a thin blanket rumpled on the floor. Vague streaks of dust were smeared on the floor that were probably dead nanomachines, marring the red reflection from the doorway. Coldsnap traced the dust as it made its way out onto the concrete and into the other cell, then pulled up short.

The floor was covered in the remains of an IV pole and its contents, torn apart by Machina’s nanomachine blades. Another small cot was in the corner of the cell, the remains of medical restraints lying shredded around its feet, along with a discarded hospital gown. And huddled on the cot were two young adults, one unconscious and clad only in underwear and the other staring straight at him with unbridled terror. Coldsnap noted the end of a tube poking out of one nostril, the blood trailing down one arm despite the bandage wrapped around the elbow, the hollow cheeks and the greasy black hair and the dark circles around the wide green eyes, and felt his stomach drop like he’d missed a stair on a staircase.

Then the conscious man’s eyes clenched shut, and an exact copy of him flickered into being in the doorway, teeth bared despite the way he wavered on bare feet. “I don’t know who you are, but you’d better not come in here.”

“Whoa, hey, easy. I’m not here to hurt you.” Coldsnap carefully reached up and raised the visor on his helmet. “I’m Coldsnap. I’m here with my friend Machina back there, and we want to help you and your friend there.” He glanced at the pair again, and realized with a jolt of alarm that he wasn’t sure if the unconscious one was breathing. “What happened to her?”

The double on the bed opened his eyes and looked down at his friend. His eyes were glazed, barely focused, and when his standing double spoke, his voice shook around the disjointed words. “I—the men who—Bell. Their name is Bellami, and I’m Kostas, and the men who kidnapped us put them in that cell and blacked it out, and they’re dying. They need—light, even a flashlight—please—“

Coldsnap held up his hands. “Whoa, slow down.” The double’s mouth clicked shut, and Coldsnap continued in a gentler voice, “Your name is Kostas?” He nodded. “Your friend’s name is Bellami?” He nodded again. “They need light, and the overhead lights aren’t enough?”

Kostas shook his head, and Coldsnap twisted to look at Machina, who stood rigid beside the computers. When there was no response, he turned back, fishing a tactical flashlight from his belt. “Here. It’s like 90,000 lumens, so hopefully it’ll help. We’ll get you both out of here ASAP.”

Kostas fumbled the flashlight, and Coldsnap helped him close his shaking fingers around it. The tentacat on his shoulder gave a plaintive mew and transferred itself to Kostas, and Coldsnap couldn’t help a chuckle. “Looks like my new friend here wants to help you too.” 

Kostas swallowed, staring at him. “Th-thank you. I–I think I have it now.”

“You sure?” When Kostas nodded, Coldsnap let go, and Kostas turned and made his slow way to the cot with movements that implied he’d forgotten how knees and ankles worked. When he got to the cot, he just let the flashlight fall into his double’s hand, flickering out of existence as the tentacat dropped to the cot with a wet thud. Kostas stared at the cat as it curled into Bell’s side and started purring, then looked at the flashlight in his hand. 

Then he raised it and turned it on.

For a long moment, Bell didn’t react to the new wash of white light over their pale, freckly body. Then they turned their head, golden hair shimmering despite its oily state, and Coldsnap let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding when he saw the shadows of their breasts slowly rise with their breath. Coldsnap gave Kostas a smile as he looked up, then pulled his visor back down. “Hold tight, okay? We’ll get you out of here as soon as we find the guys who put you down here–”

The sound of a gun going off in a closed room was less a sound and more a full body experience, especially when you were the target. There was an explosion of sound, then an explosion of pain between his shoulderblades, and as he staggered forward, it continued, one shot after another.

On the fifth shot, one of the bullets made it past his damaged body armor.

On the sixth, the bullet hit his helmet, sending him pitching to the floor.

The world had gone black before he hit the ground.

***

Coldsnap woke up to pulsating agony in his back. The only reason he wasn’t sobbing was because he could barely breathe, and he was surprised that he couldn’t hear the no-doubt embarrassing whimpering noises that he had to be making. Then he realized his ears were ringing from the gunshots, and probably blood loss and a concussion as well if the way his head was spinning was any indicator. The fact that he was alive at all to hear it was something he could thank his well-armored helmet for, but right now he was kind of wishing it hadn’t worked so well.

Still, he should probably see who had tried to kill him. He laid on the floor until he could draw a deep enough breath to stop the black spots in front of his eyes from multiplying, then tried to decide which arm hurt less. Trying to move his left arm sent a jagged blade of pain up into his skull and turned the world white and glowing, and he could swear he felt the bullet grinding under his shoulderblade. The right arm hurt less, in that the jagged blade became more of a needle and there was no grinding sensation, but it was at least ten seconds before he was fully upright, swaying slightly as he looked around.

As it turned out, the world hadn’t been white and glowing only because of pain. Someone had turned on the full overhead lights, and he’d apparently shattered his visor in the fall, because he was getting the full force of the bright white lights bouncing off of the white walls and floor. He grimaced and clenched his eyes shut against the pain that spiked in his head. This is going to make finding the guy who shot me kind of hard…

The ringing in his ears became louder. He swallowed, pressing a gloved hand to his mouth in a desperate attempt to keep from vomiting. Then the ringing kicked up another notch, and he realized that it wasn’t just ringing.

Someone was screaming. Someone he knew.

He spun around, panic making him ignore the way the world started to blur and waver, and found a scene right out of a nightmare.

In the middle of the room was a red cloud, writhing as it screeched in the mechanical, buzzing tones of a dying speaker. Sparks jumped through it as a steady rain of dying nanomachines piled on the floor–as Machina died by torturous inches as one of the men in front of him did something to him, hands outstretched and a smirk on his face. Coldsnap figured the man was a technopath, but he didn’t have much time to care, not when the red cloud of Machina’s scattered nanomachines was getting fainter and fainter.

The remains of the IV and the puddle of blood on the floor froze into four thick spikes with a resounding crack. Both men jumped, beginning to turn, and Coldsnap flung out his right hand in a desperate arc.

The spikes pierced their knees and stuck there. Coldsnap twisted his hand as the men fell, freezing the flesh and blood around the spikes as they took over the screaming.

He let the men descend into whimpers that he could only barely hear, panting and trying hard not to give into the fuzz at the edges of his vision. The men tried to free themselves from the ice, but Coldsnap just weakly clenched his fist, freezing the blood that was slowly trickling onto the floor. Behind them, the red cloud was slowly forming into Machina, translucent and still with wide, terrified red eyes in an otherwise blank face.

Machina didn’t do terror. He did snark, and condescension, and anger, but he didn’t do terror.

Suddenly, Coldsnap wasn’t panicking anymore. The pain and dizziness faded into the background, subsumed by the icy, thoughtful rage trickling through his veins like snowmelt as he forced himself to his feet.

“You know,” he said conversationally as he tore off his helmet and let it fall to the ground, “We were going to just come down here and talk.” The water still on his suit began to shed into a cloud of diamond dust that followed him as he sauntered forward. “Villain to villain. Give you two a chance to realize that coming here was a mistake, and to clear out.” He left bloody, frozen footprints behind him as he made his slow way to stand in front of the two men. “It’s a courtesy, really, but we’re fond of playing our roles to the hilt. And you know, I wasn’t too happy about the animal experimentation, but we could have worked something out.”

He stared down at the men in front of him, and he could see the crooked slash of a smile spreading across his face reflected in the man’s eyes. “But there are some things I really can’t forgive. Experimenting on unwilling innocents, for one. Hurting my friends, for another.” He reached down and put two fingers under the chin of the man who had been tormenting Machina, ignoring the agony running down his spine. “Do you know what I do to people who hurt my friends?”

The man’s eyes widened. “Y-you–you c-can’t–you’re r-reformed–”

“Now whatever gave you that idea?” Coldsnap’s smile grew wider. “My name change? My new job?” When the man tried to nod, Coldsnap laughed and patted his cheek. “I’ve gone straight, true. I like having people scream because they like me and want to see more. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what I learned as Frostbite–it just means I like to use it to help people. And sometimes that means getting rid of things like you.”

He ran a gentle thumb over the man’s cheekbone. “I could make it quick. My favorite way to assassinate someone was to freeze the blood in their brain, you know–you’d drop in a second, and not know what happened. But you two nearly killed those kids, you were torturing Machina here, and your friend,” he paused, eyes flicking to the revolver at the other man’s hip, “tried to kill me. Thankfully my boyfriend and datemate make very good armor, but I’m still bleeding, and that’s put me in a bad mood.”

Coldsnap let the man go and stepped back. “He’s all yours, Machina.”

Machina tilted his head, too slowly and smoothly to be anything close to flesh and blood. Then his form condensed and sharpened, quite literally.

The nanomachine blade shot forward, and Coldsnap turned his head slightly to avoid the blood spatter getting in his eyes.

When he turned back, there was something that could have been a human being if you squinted past the blood and played jigsaw in your head. Coldsnap looked at Machina, who had seemingly given up on maintaining any cohesive form and was flowing back to the computer bank in a sluggish stream, then at the remaining man, who was staring up at him, shock-white and trembling. Coldsnap gave him a smile dragged up from the center of a glacier, then looked up. “Hey, Kostas—“

He cut himself off so fast his teeth sank into his cheek. Kostas was staring at the remains of the man that Machina had killed, trembling and clinging to one of Bell’s hands. As Coldsnap watched, Bell shifted slightly and opened hazy golden eyes. They looked around, lips moving in something Coldsnap couldn’t make out, and Kostas placed a shaking hand over their eyes.

Don’t look, Bell, Coldsnap read from his lips. Kostas looked up and flinched from Coldsnap’s gaze. Please, Bell, just don’t look.

Sludgy self-disgust mixed with the icy rage in Coldsnap’s veins, and he turned back to the man in front of him with bile burning in the back of his throat. “...I’ll let Pain Management deal with you.” He reached out and clenched his right hand to freeze the blood still flowing sluggishly from the man’s knees, ignoring the grating whine of pain that escaped from between the man’s clenched teeth. “Who knows? They might even let you live. Easier to keep scum out when they know what might happen to them otherwise.”

With that, Coldsnap spun on his heel, taking slow breaths that did nothing to combat the urge to cry that was building behind his eyes as he walked over to the computers. “Machina, could you let Pain Management know where we are?” A tear worked its way free, and he scrubbed it away before it could freeze to his skin. “I think we need some damage control here.”

***

The strobing red lights of the ambulances cast dizzying shadows across the parking lot. Nilo leaned against the brick wall of the paper plant, watching the paramedics finish preparing Kostas and Bell for travel. For someone who had apparently been subsisting off of low-quality nasogastric feeding for a couple of weeks, Kostas was stubborn almost to the point of combativeness. Nilo could see a flickering, unsteady double trying to get into the ambulance that Bell was being loaded into, and when Eugen started to approach, Kostas gave him a look bordering on terrified.

“You should be in the car,” Kusanagi said from behind him. Nilo stubbornly stared at the ambulances, and Kusanagi sighed, gliding forward to stand beside him and watch too.

Nilo glanced at him, and let out a quick breath when he saw that Kusanagi was solid once again. “Ties bring you a new set of nanomachines?”

“Yes. Also, you’re deflecting.” Kusanagi raised an eyebrow. “You have a healing factor, sure. You still need to go to, if not the hospital, at least to a doctor.”

Nilo smiled slightly. “Thanks for getting the bullet out before I healed, by the way.” The smile fell, and he went back to watching the ambulance. “I’ll get in soon. I just…”

“You’re self flagellating.”

Nilo watched as Kostas hesitantly nodded to Eugen. Eugen crouched beside him and began to murmur in his ear, and the flickering double vanished as Kostas began to relax. “...That’s my fault. He doesn’t trust us because of me.”

“If I recall, I was the one who disincorporated that technopath.” Nilo saw Kusanagi shrug out of the corner out of his eye. “I will say that it was unfortunate that the kid saw, but if it was anyone’s fault, it was mine.”

“Was it?” Nilo clenched his hands into fists to hide his trembling fingers. “You saw the way they looked at us, Kusanagi. They weren’t just scared of you.”

Kusanagi gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Nilo, you’ve botched performances and scared people before. You’ve also killed to protect people before, and scared people that way. What’s different about this time?”

Nilo stared out at the parking lot. “...The last time an innocent person looked at me like that, I was still under Father’s thumb.” He gave a bitter twist of a smile. “I was still Frostbite.”

He still remembered what it felt like to kill that woman. Her face still featured in his nightmares, slowly icing over as she stared at him in terror.

To this day, he still didn’t know what she’d done to upset Father.

Kusanagi gave a frustrated sigh and stepped in front of Nilo to block his view. “Look. I’m probably not the best person for you to talk about this with, considering my congenital lack of empathy. But do you remember what you told me when I asked you why you weren’t going to play hero in the kayfabe?”

“...because villains aren’t scared of heroes,” Nilo said quietly. “Not the ones that need to be scared. But they’re scared of other villains.”

Kusanagi nodded. “And you wanted to be the villain they were scared of. But you know as well as I do that if you’re going to do that, you have to follow through.” He gestured over his shoulder at the ambulances. “And this is what happens when you do—people are alive at the end of it, even if they’re a little bit traumatized. I’d call that a win.”

Nilo stared at the ambulances for another moment. Then he sighed and let his shoulders slump. “I guess. I just…”

“Took all the empathy so I didn’t have to.” Kusanagi slung an arm over his shoulders, forcibly turning him toward the car. “Look. You’ve done everything anyone is going to let you do for them tonight. Maybe tomorrow you can apologize, but for now, let’s get you back to the car before Ties either steals your cat-octopus hybrid or leaves it with a small child.”

Nilo scowled. “That is my cat! He’s not allowed to do either of those things! Come on, so I don’t have to freeze your brother solid.”

He stalked off towards the car. Behind him, the sirens wailed to life, and he glanced over his shoulder at the sound to see cars pulling out of the way.

He glanced at the ambulances. For a moment, he thought he saw Kostas’ double flickering in the back window, mouthing Thank you through the tinted glass.

Then the ambulances turned the corner and were gone.